Last Week in Logistics, 9 June to 15 June
A note on style to open - where you see text that is bold and italic, that is my analytical comment. Often, I append that to news items, but sometimes it will simply be that generic aspects of the previous week will generate comment untethered from a specific news item or similar. I want to keep clear for you, the reader, what flavor of content you are consuming at any given moment. Enjoy!
Subsistence OSINT
The Pentagon Pizza Tracker, monitoring food delivery to the Arlington offices of DoD, has reliably identified a key national security moment via order analysis, as Pentagon staff worked out of hours Thursday evening in advance of the Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership.
Ukraine War
Engels is the target of choice for the week. It started on Monday with photo recon of the damage to the oil depot from the 6 June attacks. On Wednesday, an automobile repair plant was reported on fire. Tambov gunpowder factory in Russia came under drone attack on the 11th.
The Spiderweb (Concept) grows. SBU chief teases future operations: "The SBU is hitting and will hit (Russia) where it considers itself unreachable!" Maliuk said in a statement. "We are working on new surprises, no less painful than the Operation Spiderweb."
EU drops its 18th package of sanctions on Russia. Absolute sanctions being difficult to impose, and their effect is attritional not destructive, the incrementalism of sanctions packages is less “unwillingness to recognize reality” and more “impose according to a workable calendar and let effects set in at each round.” If needs be, Europe is preparing for how to continue support to Ukraine in the event Trump cancels all support. CDS Admiral Radakin buttressed the strength of European NATO with clear, almost cheeky, messaging on its overmatch against Russia. And such an outcome may not be bad for Europe, as The Economist reports that recently downtrodden industrial cities are enjoying the benefits of defence production.
Swedish King of Battle, the Archer, is proving highly effective against Russian tanks in Ukraine.
This image of a helicopter provided by Portugal helping to douse the fires of Russian bombs. The Life Strategy at work.
In addition to prisoner exchanges, Russia and Ukraine have engaged in Mortuary Diplomacy, arranging for the dignified return of remains.
And the Russian economy continues to flag: “In May 25, budget revenues fell -6% Y/Y for the first time in 1.5 years. This is the most important indicator of the economic crisis. Against the backdrop of 10% inflation, the drop in revenues in real terms is 16%.” Evgen Istrebin. The escalating tensions in the Middle East with strikes being exchanged between Iran and Israel may offer something in the way of succor as oil prices rise on the uncertainty.
Maritime
The PLAN carriers embarked upon their first long-distance, blue-water training. I would kill to be a fly on the wall of the logistical support operation for this maiden voyage.
Global freight faces another hit with conflict between Israel and Iran threatening passage through the Straits of Hormuz. Shipping companies plan for self-defense in the events the waters are contested or harried.
Trade/Economy
At the Morgan Stanley US Financials conference: Citi Banking head Raghavan shares that corporate clients plan for baseline US tariffs at 10% to 20%, contemplating implication of higher. The World Bank heralds the costs of the US trade war.
In the EU-US tariff standoff, there is tentative hope an arrangement ahead of the pause’s end in July has been reached. However, Trump’s tariffs have kicked off a re-think within European firms over the ramifications of their use of American software products like Microsoft.
Crisis Response
The Trump Administration is pushing disaster and crisis response management to the States, with little sense of whether and what funding support will be forthcoming. Most recently, they have rejected applications from Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma. It should be noted that individual States *can* operate the administration and funding of emergency management - but it will be more costly than a nationally organized operation. And, in response to Trump’s announcement FEMA would be closed at the end of November, the New York Times reported that the head of the FEMA’s disaster command center responsible for coordinating the national response to disasters, has submitted his resignation, coming a day after President Trump said he would wind down the federal agency.
Infrastructure
Western electrical grid operators are establishing themselves in the market to moderate single utility service supply/demand issues.
The growth of data centers may be driven not by demand for storage but for the creation of “datafied” society.
Waste Management
New York City is moving forward to incorporate composting to its regular service. In my building, the uptake has been significant, and I will endeavor to track whether this is representative. However, public will is not the only requirement. While our building’s service is facilitative in every direction, a friend in a coop reports that access to the bin is limited to a single, weekly deposit, complicating storage and leading the management to make the absurd recommendation to tenants to freeze their organic waste until collection day.
Oyster gardens are being deployed in Maryland for water purification.
America’s Cities
Urban centers only exist because logistical challenges are serially conquered at scale. Cities are logistics. Their life depends upon the most complex clockworks of systems large and small, some overlapping and integrating, others discrete, common and unique, resilient and fragile…and all necessary in quotidian regularity for its survival. It is no place for a robust demonstration of force, irrespective of Senator Cotton’s notions that overwhelming force wins. As I have argued in my strategic hat elsewhere, but will bring here in the coming weeks, the city is best secured (in the military sense) by logistics.
Moreover, the unfolding drama in LA and similar threatened elsewhere is itself inspired by the foul logistics of mass deportation. The numbers for “production” of criminal deportees are simply not sufficient to the campaign promise to eject millions of illegal immigrants. Moreover, certain categories of undocumented workers are being exempted from deportation, at least for now (eg, those in agriculture or tourism). This is limiting those ICE and DHS can target and driving them into communities, into courthouses, Home Depot parking lots, at jobs and schools, into spaces where they are bound to create friction and drama with the public over who they are rounding up and how. It is the first phase of the Logistics of Inhumanity unleashed by this policy.
In sentences I would prefer not to write, as soldiers and Marines were deployed to LA to “quell unrest” - nay, even flirt with regime change, per DHS Secretary Noem (“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city,”) - the “First Day Blues” of deployed logistics were noted in local and national politics and social media. I am all for holding the Trump and Hegseth defense establishment to the highest account, but it is almost impossible to situate an emergency deployment sufficiently on the first night. Time and Space simply will not bend, no matter the desire. So, while much hay was made of these images, itself this is not a partisan issue. The decision to deploy in such a crisis fashion when no such condition existed, setting the stage for this decrepit exigency, is up for critique and question. And it is not as if they were not warned: “The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles-absent clear coordination-presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.” - LAPD Chief (who was not notified).
And this deployment will not come cheap: Defense Department calculations have the cost for a sixty-day operation at present force levels to be $134 million.
Guantanamo
The Trump Administration announces that mass deportations to the camp in Cuba are back on again.
The Postal Service
I am particularly fond of tea towels, and the rise of postal services, the USPS included, is one of the great domestic and international civic projects yet conceived. Consider - you can affix a relatively paltry bit of money to letter or package and through myriad legs and junctions, it can appear anywhere else on the planet. And in doing so, it demonstrates the power of Socialized Logistics to improve life. We seem also to feature many birds on this blog - fitting as they are the urtext of airpower and were, in fact, early vehicles of airborne messaging.
