Greetings and Salutations!
Was out sick after eating some dodgy Hindu Food the other night. Both Gretchen and myself were doing our own personal imitation of AT-4 Rocket Launchers, namely ‘bazooka barfing’ out the front, and then rushing to the bathroom for the ‘backblast’.
The tummies are doing better but I had to bang out of Glorious People’s Tractor factor an hour after I got there. Spent most of the day sweating out the “ugh” so to speak. I DID have one cool thing today that showed up in the mail however!
One of you donated a gift to the “Big Country Museum of Mayhem” that showed up today. Sapper went to walk the doggos and came in and told me a package had shown up. It was a 2 foot cube. Basic cardboard but he was struggling to balance it what with the two dogs on the leads. “It’s heavy dude!” so I got up and sure enough… WOW. Like almost a 30 pound box!
When I opened it, much to my delight and surprise was a pair of TA-312A Field Telephones!

Both of them appear to be in magnificent shape.
The note said that they worked when they were last tested. Seem his Granddad had brought them back from Vietnam, and no one in the fam wanted them, so he donated them to me.
How cool is that?
Besides the awesome addition to the Museum, a TA-312 has a LOT of uses if things go sideways. Having a field phone allows you to have cabled non-interceptable communications, and as long as the wire strands aren’t cut or tapped, you’ve got a nice closed loop commo system.
For those of you non-military folks, a TA-312 is an Analog Field Telephone that was put into production after World War 2. It utilizes either 2 D Cell Batteries, called the BA-30 in military nomenclature and is a hardwired phone that can be used in a one-on-one closed telephone circuit, or be used in a larger Plain Old Telephone System or POTS which used a military switchboard and a wider use in units across an area of operations.
Now on these two, the battery compartments are clean of any corrosion, which was and still is a problem with these things. Troops forget to pull the batteries which corrode, and then rot the internals, so a LOT of them on the surplus market are nonfunctional because of just that. As you can see:

BOTH of mine are just like that… ZERO corrosion or even signs of it. Both battery compartment gaskets are like new, and tight too, which is a bonus.
The TA-312 was used from the 1950s through the 1980s. Replaced by the TA-838 which is the current (2003) analog field phone. And yep, they’re STILL in use. This is one of those Army products that’s made to be indestructible and last forever.
The operation of these requires a roll of two-strand shielded wire called WD-1 that’s on half a mile long rolls.

Those are the small rolls that are usually issued to platoon sized elements. In our TOW platoon, we had One 312 per truck, and one roll of wire between each two trucks. We’d then run a wire from truck to truck so we had comms that didn’t require us to use our radios, which could be used to triangulate our position IF the bad guys were looking for us.
Radio Direction Finding has been a BIG THING in the Krain. Between handheld Motorolas or their Russian/Krainian counterparts and the like, both sides use RDF to find and fire up the other side with Artillery to great effect. Having a wired Field Telephone negates that hazard, which is why these are sooooo cool in my book.
Like as in an End of the World or Without Rule of Law scenario, running a phone to a lookout and back to the radio watch means NOT having a radio going that could be picked up if the potential hostiles in your area are monitoring communications with a broadband scanner. If they can’t hear you, then they might not know you’re there, or that you have eyes on them, or are even coordinating action against them.
These are all good things.
It’s funny… I’ve actually been negotiating with a Fren on Twatter who’s got a German World War Two field phone that HIS either Great Granddad or Granddad brought back when he came home from the war. Now I do know that that’d be compatible with the TA-312 because WE essentially took the same exact design, and MADE the 312 from the German one. If I manage to get that hammered out, well that’s going to be an AWESOME addition as well, as well as add another potential comm unit if things go even MOAR pear shaped.

That’s the parts breakdown.
It’s really easy to use. I also know that the two I have are the newer/later models as they have a little LED bar-light that’s connected to the ‘bat binding post’

That’s the LED off hook indicator. This is a warning that the handset is not “on hook”. Warning people nearby that the phone is live and anything they say can be heard along the line as these are sound-based…
SO yeah.
Ended the day on a great note to say the least.
Now as it is, the rest of the world?
Don’t really know. I do know that the Propaganda Spin Machine is in overdrive on ALL sides, and that’s to be expected. I was just glad to wake up and see that OrangeManBad, despite the rhetoric and shit that’s been blasted out there has not so far gotten us absolutely involved via direct action. I’m beginning to think that Satanyahoo when he said that OMB had essentially set up all the Iranian Leadership for a fall, that it was bullshit, and that it pissed off OMB. I mean really…
Can you imagine being someone trying to negotiate with the Iranian High Command?
(calls Iranian High Command)
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Iranian General. The terms as previously laid out are…”
WHAM!
(Phone disconnect sound here)
“FUUUUUUUUCK!” (waits one day to resume calling)
“Okay, Mr. Next Iranian General, the terms as laid out with your predecessor’s predecessor are…”
WHAM!
(Phone disconnect sound here again)
“GOD DAMNIT ISRAEL! CAN YOU JUST LET ME FINISH THE SENTENCE?”
Now the latest is that he’s said that he’s looking at making a decision on whether to bomb or not bomb in two weeks? That’s cold and brilliant. And the reason?

What’s not being said is that for every missile Iran is lobbing, it takes between 10-20 counter-battery missiles (and yeah PLURAL) at between $200 and up to $1 million at throw to shoot down… and Hypersonics? Those have been unstoppable despite claims to the contrary.
They, like out DDS’s off the coast of Yemen ran out of ammunition pretty quickly. I think the Izzies are too now.

My take? I think the Izzies were counting on a HUUUUGE counterstrike after their initial hit on the 14th. Per the news:

…and that “Holocaust-y Level” of deaths in that counterstrike would have been the motivator to get the US to jump in with both feet (blindly per usual) and do “Our Master’s Bidding” per usual. H/T to Simplicius76 for the screenshots.
Instead?
Weeeeell now. Two weeks?
Do the Izzies even have two weeks worth of ammo left?
They’re going to be in deep shit if this’s true
Even with the US trying to resupply them, to the point of diverting the ammo that was meant to keep the Krainians in the fight, I’d have to say, per that released/leaked TS Documentation by that National Guardsman last year, that now?
I’d guess OUR cupboard is bare AF by now.
Despite all the “Rah Rah! we’re rebuilding our DotMil Infrastructure” bullshit, as far as -I- have heard and known, there’s nothing outside of what we’ve alreadybeen doing which is trying desperately to ramp up our domestic production of Artillery Shells… and even THAT has been fraught with all sorts of bureaucratic bullshit and problems.
I’m laughing about this mind you.
“What if they threw a war, and nobody showed up?”
Looks like it might go that way. Too many people are ‘bowing out’ on this one. Twitter, which in the past was a ravening horde of Leftwing Thought Policing has even gotten on the “We won’t die for Israel” bandwagon. Despite the folks who still try and hold a grudge for what happened in 1979 when the Shah got overthrown and the US Embassy got hemmed up for 444 days, I say they don’t know their history very well…
The enmity between the US and Iran started in 1953, when under the guise of being worried about communism, the CIA and Brits overthrew the legally elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. MI6 and the CIA then installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Ostensibly about creeping communism, which was the favorite bugaboo of the time, it was really about Big Mo wanting to nationalize the Iranian Oil Production, and keep the profits for the Iranian People so to speak… whether that would have worked or if he’d have done like ALL the rest of the Middle Eastern leadershit did and still does (namely keep the profits for himself and his close associates) remains a question lost to time.
The fact is the Brits and BP, British Petroleum were pretty pissed off on getting freezed out of a cut of the action, as THEY were the ones who initially set up the Iranian Oil biz. From what I’ve read and studied, Big Mo was “The Man in Iran” and really loved by the population, so when the figurehead Shah was ‘installed’ via a coup, well… the people weren’t happy about it. The Brits were the motivators behind it, and used the CIA as the muscle, and the Iranians never forgave us for that.
Say what you want, but I lived with these people, and let me tell you… Babylonians (Iraqis) or Persians (Iranian)? They have loooooong memories and blood feud is literally deeply imbued in their cultures. This shit runs deep.
It got worse when the Shah went “Full Dictator” and was essentially the same sort of asshole Saddam was in Iraq. Torture, Executions, Disappearances and the like became the norm under the Shah. It was when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini showed that things went pear-shaped, the Shah bailed and we got left holding the bag so to speak… A
And unfortunately, because of the shitty education system we have here in the States, OUR people have no fucking clue just why and how justified the Iranians are in being pissed off at the US for fucking them over forever and a damned day.
All our folks, including the majority of Boomercons remember is the embarrassing Hostage Crisis and the Failed Rescue Attempt which was NOT the Iranian’s fault (although the parading our our guys dead was not cool). Iran didn’t help throughout the 80s blowing up our folks whenever they saw a chance, and it’s been a lo-key back and forth ever since.
Before it was Britain manipulating the whole shebang.
Now it’s the Izzies.
So no matter what, we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. They even trotted out the late Shah’s Son to give a recorded speech calling on “All Right Thinking Iranians to Rise Up Against The Mullahs” and, as one would have expected, landed like a wet shart after a night of drinking cheap beer.
What the strikes did was the exact opposite.
The Mullahs, while having issues with the younger generations wanting more access to the world and a slacking off of Sharia Law, have now been empowered by a wave of nationalism. AGAIN our intel agencies done went and screwed the pooch, as well as the Izzies, who look like the fucking clowns that they are, and instead of an overthrow, the Iranian People, as a whole, are now digging in for the long haul.
And considering the size of the country?
Ain’t no way to stop the Iranians IF they decide to end this. The only way to stop them IF they decide to go ‘all in’ is “canned sunshine” from the Izzies, and at that point? All bets are off.
In fact I would not doubt that as we speak, they’re putting together a Nuke right now. Lord knows they got the materials… and in their case, they may not have had one before, but any bets under the latest circumstances that they probably have one now or will have one within a week or two?
I’m not taking those odds.
So let me know your thoughts.
And By the way, Happy Juneteenth.
It’s nice to see that THIS year at least, it hasn’t been shoved down our fucking throats like it was in years past.
More Later
Big Country
