Ummagumma

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] (4 pm Eastern Time) The Houthis hit the passenger terminals at Riyadh's international airport yesterday. Saudi authorities report 12 dead and 309 injured, the deadliest attack on any Gulf Arab country since the war began. It was the third strike on King Khalid International Airport in a week. The Wall Street Journal reports direct hits on two buildings of the domestic terminal complex. This evening another projectile struck Terminal 4, a passenger terminal, injuring more people. The toll is still rising.  India says one of its citizens has died of wounds from yesterday's attack. The Houthis have declared Saudi airspace a zone of military operations and warned everyone away from Saudi airports, and their media chief boasted that they had shut down Riyadh's international airport. Every major player in the region (minus Iran) condemns the attack. Suddenly, the airport is the center point of this sprawling war. I wonder whether the Houthis achieved ...

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] (2pm Eastern Time) As I write this, Yemen's government is attacking the Houthis along the Red Sea coast. Yemeni troops on the ground. Saudi air power overhead. Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, announced the offensive on television today and called it the battle for the state, until Yemen is liberated from the Houthis. The stated aim is to retake all Houthi-held territory and restore state authority across the whole country. Government forces say they are striking Sanaa and Saada, the Houthi capital and the Houthi heartland. Heavy ground fighting broke out in the Kahboub Mountains, the high ground overlooking Bab el-Mandeb, with government troops and al-Subaiha tribesmen attacking Houthi positions. The Houthis still hold the initiative. In the last 48 hours they took strategic hilltops near Taiz and cut the last supply road between Taiz and Aden. Several outlets report Taiz encircled or close to it. That is Yemen...

The start of the Longstreet Attacks scenario. The Confederates are to the right (east), the Federals to the left (west). Both sides have already constructed breastworks which was common by this stage of the war. Wood's division is in column ready to move to the north just as Johnson's division of Hood's Corps attacks Brotherton Field. Longstreet and Rosecrans can be seen in the lower right and left corners, respectively. The game prints the various Rebel corps in a different shade of butternut or gray. The Yankee corps are in differing shades of blue. The battle extends beyond the area captured on this map.  This is a BIG game at a regiment scale. The biggest weakness in the “realism” of board style wargames is that you can see where everybody is on the board. Certain games hide it somewhat but you kind of always know what’s near any given unit of your side. That is an enormous advantage that did not occur historically. Particularly at the time of the Napoleonic Wars or the...

Almost all of western Yemen is now controlled by the Houthi rebels supported by the IRGC. [ Read all my Iran stuff. ] Note: I reference a lot of people in this post that are important to this situation. Few have ever heard of any of them. You'll have to look them up yourself if you want more details. My focus is obviously on one previously obscure man in particular. His name is Yusuf al-Madani. Almost no one outside Yemen had heard of him a week ago. Then his forces broke through the front, captured the Red Sea port of Mocha , drove down the coast and reached Bab el-Mandeb at the base of the Red Sea. A Houthi-linked estimate put their gains at more than 6,000 square kilometres. More than 2,300 square miles. Nearly the size of Delaware, taken in a few days. It was a classic blitzkrieg in the middle of a missile war. Al-Madani is the most successful ground commander of anything stimulated by Epic Fury so far. The Houthis have never publicly named the commander of the operation. ...

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] (9AM Eastern Time...) I thought a lull would settle in on this war weeks ago. Then the IRGC demonstrated that they would continue attacking so the US had to massively retaliate, of course. The United States and Israel had inflicted extraordinary military damage on Iran. Iran's nuclear capability had been severely degraded. The Iranian economy was about to hemorrhage inflation. Yet the IRGC had managed to turn the Strait of Hormuz into the central strategic fact of the war. Whoever controls Hormuz is winning the war. For most of the summer, that was the IRGC. They possessed the missiles, drones, mines and small boats to choke-off traffic. Some ships were allowed through. Others were warned away. Chinese-related traffic received preferential treatment. Several more tankers were struck near the Strait, including vessels operating around Omani waters. Unlike earlier attacks, the IRGC stopped taking credit for them. The attacks remain officially ...

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] Note (October 12, 2026): This post has been updated to reflect actual civilian casualty estimates. Since late last year, I’ve been enjoying David Stahel’s outstanding series of books on the German operations against Soviet Russia in 1941. I hope to review his body of work in the future. Back in May I quoted Stahel and it bears repeating: “It is important to remember that battlefield victories are not ends in themselves. Their worth is calculated from the strategic possibilities, military or political, that these stimulate.” Although the quote is universally applicable, Stahel was writing about Barbarossa, one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever. The Germans captured millions of Soviet troops, destroyed multiple armies while advancing hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union. They were winning everywhere. Yet, Stahel argues that somewhere in the middle of all that success Germany was already losing the war strategically. The victories stimulated ...