HOME > WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD

WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD

Welcome to the website!

Most of the papers here are from my studies at King's College London in an online "programme" for mid-career British Army officers called War in the Modern World. About half the students were indeed British Army, including a captain who deployed to Afghanistan midway through the four years. (Alas, upon his return he dropped out of the course, left the army, and began to study law instead.) The rest of us were from other militaries or civilian life, from a Danish pilot to an assistant to the prime minister of Singapore. I learned a great deal, and these web pages are to share it more broadly.

But first, my thoughts over the past month or so:

October 12: Viva Christoforo Columbo!

I live in a university community, where our woke city council has of course renamed October 12 in favor of the Native Americans whose genocide he supposedly launched. So our website celebrates this as Indigenous Peoples' Day. Not for me, thanks. In October 1957 I caught a flight from Frankfurt to Madrid, where I was astonished to find the Spanish capital all decked out in national and American flags. Columbus Day honors Spain, the Americas, and the Italian admiral who sailed between them. Long may it wave!

Down in Florida, two of my friends are shaking off the effects of Hurricane Isaias, and wondering if the US Weather Service was slipping Muslim names into its website. So I turned to my new best buddy, Claude, who reassured me. No, "Isaias" is actually of Hebrew descent, honoring a prophet whose name means "God is salvation."

Rather an odd monicker for a hurricane, I must say, though I'm glad to know it's not an early manifestation of Woke 3.0.

October 7: Who won the war of October 7?

Three years have passed since Hamas committed its October 7 atrocity, invading Israel in hopes of starting a war that it must inevitably lose while winning world opinion to its side. Toward this end, it built 600 miles of tunnels to hide its fighters, with particular attention to putting them under residences and hospitals, knowing that bombing them would horrify the world. Indeed, the first accusations of genocide were leveled on October 8, while the attack was still going on. That was the plan!

The United Nations had recognized a Palestinian state in 1988, though without a capital or specific borders, and 130 member countries established diplomatic relations with this phantom by October 2023. (Wikipedia puts the number at 157, but that includes 27 that voted No!) And after October 7, the Europeans piled in, notably countries that were antisemitic, woke, or worried about a Muslim minority: Ireland, Norway, Spain, Britain, and France. The leaders of Hamas, snug beneath their hospital, must have been pleased with themselves.

And of course they were ready with the genocide libel. Again, Wiki is little help: its main article on the subject is the accusation, presented as fact, and if you search instead for "allegations" you're directed to the more truthful belief that the attack was the atrocity, beginning with a note: "for [the] ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza since 2023, see...." Well, that's now accepted by much if not most of the world. To me, it seems a hideous reversal of the truth. The first generally recognized genocide of the 20th century was Turkey's expulsion and murder of Armenians in 1915-17. The word itself was introduced in 1948 by Rafael Lemkin, a Polish (and Jewish) lawyer then teaching in the US, and was meant to define the massacre of 6 million of his co-religionists toward the end of the Second World War.

Now, in the 21st century, it's being thrown at the Jewish state, established in 1948 for those who'd fled the Holocaust or (increasingly these days) who fear another. And who can blame them?

October 4: A salute to Boeing

When Boeing's 737-MAX airliner was introduced some years ago, two fatal crashes marred the company's reputation and allowed its European rival to become the dominant provider of airframes to the world. I was asked if I'd fly on the 737-MAX, and I replied: "Sure, if it's flown by an American pilot" (most of whom are trained by the US military). Today I'd add another possibility: sure, if there's an Israeli plumber on board!

As we learn more about the assault on the Airdubai flight to Tel Aviv, and as the world's media overcomes its reluctance to connect the dots, we find that the Islamist co-pilot attacked the pilot with the crash axe that's required in every cockpit these days. The Indian pilot managed to open the door, allowing passengers and crew to storm the cockpit and subdue his attacker, so the heroic plumber could pull the airliner out of its suicide dive toward the ground. The plane by this time was at an angle of 39 degrees and a speed near Mach 1 -- the speed of sound. The recovery subjected the aircraft to three G's, meaning that it and everyone aboard, were suddenly subject to three times their normal weight. But the plane survived except for some damage to the rudder, and two relief pilots aboard were able to fly it for another hour and bring it down to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Some plumber! Some aircraft!

October 1: Don't mess with the Israelis!

Evoking memories of Flight 93, the hijacked American plane that crashed in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, brave passengers and crew aboard a Dubai airliner managed to save it and themselves from the same fate. Almost all the passengers were Israelis, including many children and four American dual citizens.

What seems to have happened is that the co-pilot (traditionally the officer in the righthand seat) stabbed the pilot, who fought back and unlocked the cockpit door so that passengers and crew could subdue the officer who was apparently attempting the crash the plane. Several of them were also bloodied. Fortunately, two relief pilots were also aboard and able to take the controls and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The war that began on October 7 three years ago is still ongoing, and though there are casualties, the Israelis are still winning. God bless them

September 25: Quote/Unquote

"According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers-more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025-doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP." (The Wall Street Journal)

September 23: A qualified cheer for Trump on Greenland

The huge, beautiful, icebound, and thinly populated island to our northeast has been integral to US defense for nearly a century, with a high point during the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. To his credit, President Trump recognized this, but in his trademark blundering way he succeeded in annoying the Greenlanders, their onetime colonial masters in Denmark, and most of the NATO alliance by proclaiming that we'd simply take it over as an American possession. What he now proposes instead -- to the extent that anyone can suss out what Mr Trump actually intends -- is much smarter and more likely to meet approval in Nuuk, Copenhagen, and Brussels. In short we get to expand our military and economic presence, and nobody in Moscow or Bejing need apply. (For more about our long relationship with the largest island in the world, see my little e-book about Bluie West One).

September 11: Remembering Nine/Eleven

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I climbed into my favorite Piper Cub -- built in 1946 but kitted out as a WW2 artillery spotter with extra-large windows -- and few northwest on a GPS line toward the little airport where I planned to top off the gas tank for my annual flight around the White Mountains. It was one of those golden days that reward us for having the fortitude to live in New Hampshire.

I was considering a touch-and-go at Wolfeboro, where I'd graduated from high school in 1950, when the little radio in my breast pocket chirped to life: a pilot across the state line in Maine was ready for takeoff. Somebody told him to abort. "I'm already off the ground," he said. "Well, turn back," said the other voice. "There's a national emergency and the airspace is closed."

There being no fuel pump at Wolfeboro, I decided to keep quiet and fly on to Moultonboro. (The Piper Cub was designed before electrics were standard, so my portable radio and plump green earphones were entirely optional.) I landed, gassed up, and secured the Cub to a fence, whereupon a golf cart drove up and I learned that "a 707" had crashed into a skyscraper in New York City, and American airspace was indeed closed until further notice.

Well, the Cub and I did in time get home, and on every 9/11 thereafter until I grounded myself at 80, I flew around the mountains, surfing over the height-of-land on the Kancamagus Highway while raising my middle finger to Osama bin Laden. To the best of my recollection, every one of those days was golden too, as indeed seems to be the case today.

September 9: A block of ice in Kyiv

"After the initial invasion [of Ukraine in 2022], a military operation that uses music, painting, and sculpture for "cognitive defense" put a life-sized iron heart in downtown Kyiv. The heart was cut out of a rusting steel plate and encased in a block of ice. Since it was winter, the ice would not melt on its own; only human hands could do that. People gathered around and put their hands on it for as long as they could stand and, person by person, day by day, the Ukrainian people melted the block of ice. I'm not a military man, but I would say that any country capable of thinking like that will be a tough country to defeat." -- Sebastian Junger on Substack

September 7: Get your one-dollar coin here, just $1.55!

(Plus shipping, of course...)

Donald Trump glories in breaking norms, most recently the norm that American coins don't show the face of an individual who's still alive. There's another that a dollar should buy a dollar's worth of something or other, though that's a norm that's probably been violated by every president. But the gold-colored President Trump coin can't do that, since it sells for $154.50 per hundred-coin bag, plus $12.95 for standard shipping. That works out to $1.67 each, meaning you experience the inflation of Trump's, Biden's, and Obama's presidencies, plus some of Duba's, all in a single purchase. And if instead you frame the Donbuck and hang it on the wall, it will continue to lose value with every passing year.

September 1: Will Putin tangle with NATO?

Certainly the Russian dictator has increased his "gray war" conflict with Western Europe in recent weeks, deploying his cyber minions to harass the Baltic governments (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which his predecessor Joe Stalin seized in 1939 as part of his deal with Hitler to divide Europe between the two dictatorships) and sending "accidental" drones onto German airports and other targets. Nor would he be the first to try to get out of an unsuccessful war by expanding it. When Hitler was talked out of invading Britain in 1940, he launched Operaton Barbarosa against Soviet Russia, a much more formidable foe. Similarly, Japan's army and air forces were stalled in China for ten years before it decided to change its luck by invading the Dutch Indies, Thailand, British Burma, and -- fatally -- Hawaii in December 1941. And Richard Nixon had a great plan to end the Vietnam War, which depended upon first invading Cambodia. Will Putin follow those bad examples?

A Rebel in the County Cork, 1915-1923: case study of an insurgency
Was the Cold War an Inevitable Outcome of World War 2?
The Clayton Theorem: Did George Marshall Save the US from Economic Collapse?
To what extent is the US experience in Iraq comparable to their experience in Vietnam?
'Not Right, but British': The Superpower Role in the Falklands War
'But the Russians won, after all!: lessons from the Chechen wars
China: O brave new hegemon!
That's what presidents are for! (Why is 'planning' not the same thing as 'strategy'?)
When Sun-tzu met Clausewitz: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and the invasion of Iraq
War sucks. Get over it. (on the novelty of 'Hybrid war')
How would John Boyd have waged a counterinsurgency?

Other good stuff to read

Gaddis: George Kennan: An American Life
Finkel: The Good Soldiers
Arreguin-Toft: How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict
Luttwak: Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
Smith: The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
Galula: Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
van Creveld: The Transformation of War
Bobbitt: 'Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century'
Ricks: 'The Gamble: Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq
Wright: 'The Looming Tower: The Road to 9/11'
Adams: 'The Army After Next: The First Postindustrial Army'
Was John Boyd a new Sun Tzu? (books about the OODA Loop)
A counterinsurgency reading list by John Nagl
50 best books about terrorism, by Joshua Sinai
more reviews of books about war as it has developed since 1945

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Get the latest news from Ukraine

Subscribe to the Kyiv Independent for as little as $5 a month

On this website: Front page | Flying Tigers | Chinese Air Force | Japan at War | Brewster Buffalo | Glen Edwards & the Flying Wing | Vietnam | War in the Modern World | The Spadguys Speak | Bluie West One | Poland 1939-1948 | Book Club | Book reviews | Question? | Google us | Website & webmaster | Site map

Other sites: Flying Tigers: the book | The blog | Daniel Ford's books | Reading Proust

Posted October 2026. Copyright © Daniel Ford 1994-2026; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their services. I never see those cookies.

October 4: A salute to Boeing

When Boeing's 737-MAX airliner was introduced some years ago, two fatal crashes marred the company's reputation and allowed its European rival to become the dominant provider of airframes to the world. I was asked if I'd fly on the 737-MAX, and I replied: "Sure, if it's flown by an American pilot" (most of whom are trained by the US military). Today I'd add another possibility: sure, if there's an Israeli plumber on board!

As we learn more about the assault on the Airdubai flight to Tel Aviv, and as the world's media overcomes its reluctance to connect the dots, we find that the Islamist co-pilot attacked the pilot with the crash axe that's required in every cockpit these days. The Indian pilot managed to open the door, allowing passengers and crew to storm the cockpit and subdue his attacker, so the heroic plumber could pull the airliner out of its suicide dive toward the ground. The plane by this time was at an angle of 39 degrees and a speed near Mach 1 -- the speed of sound. The recovery subjected the aircraft to three G's, meaning that it and everyone aboard, were suddenly subject to three times their normal weight. But the plane survived except for some damage to the rudder, and two relief pilots aboard were able to fly it for another hour and bring it down to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Some plumber! Some aircraft!

October 1: Don't mess with the Israelis!

Evoking memories of Flight 93, the hijacked American plane that crashed in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, brave passengers and crew aboard a Dubai airliner managed to save it and themselves from the same fate. Almost all the passengers were Israelis, including many children and four American dual citizens.

What seems to have happened is that the co-pilot (traditionally the officer in the righthand seat) stabbed the pilot, who fought back and unlocked the cockpit door so that passengers and crew could subdue the officer who was apparently attempting the crash the plane. Several of them were also bloodied. Fortunately, two relief pilots were also aboard and able to take the controls and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The war that began on October 7 three years ago is still ongoing, and though there are casualties, the Israelis are still winning. God bless them

September 25: Quote/Unquote

"According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers-more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025-doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP." (The Wall Street Journal)

September 23: A qualified cheer for Trump on Greenland

The huge, beautiful, icebound, and thinly populated island to our northeast has been integral to US defense for nearly a century, with a high point during the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. To his credit, President Trump recognized this, but in his trademark blundering way he succeeded in annoying the Greenlanders, their onetime colonial masters in Denmark, and most of the NATO alliance by proclaiming that we'd simply take it over as an American possession. What he now proposes instead -- to the extent that anyone can suss out what Mr Trump actually intends -- is much smarter and more likely to meet approval in Nuuk, Copenhagen, and Brussels. In short we get to expand our military and economic presence, and nobody in Moscow or Bejing need apply. (For more about our long relationship with the largest island in the world, see my little e-book about Bluie West One).

September 11: Remembering Nine/Eleven

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I climbed into my favorite Piper Cub -- built in 1946 but kitted out as a WW2 artillery spotter with extra-large windows -- and few northwest on a GPS line toward the little airport where I planned to top off the gas tank for my annual flight around the White Mountains. It was one of those golden days that reward us for having the fortitude to live in New Hampshire.

I was considering a touch-and-go at Wolfeboro, where I'd graduated from high school in 1950, when the little radio in my breast pocket chirped to life: a pilot across the state line in Maine was ready for takeoff. Somebody told him to abort. "I'm already off the ground," he said. "Well, turn back," said the other voice. "There's a national emergency and the airspace is closed."

There being no fuel pump at Wolfeboro, I decided to keep quiet and fly on to Moultonboro. (The Piper Cub was designed before electrics were standard, so my portable radio and plump green earphones were entirely optional.) I landed, gassed up, and secured the Cub to a fence, whereupon a golf cart drove up and I learned that "a 707" had crashed into a skyscraper in New York City, and American airspace was indeed closed until further notice.

Well, the Cub and I did in time get home, and on every 9/11 thereafter until I grounded myself at 80, I flew around the mountains, surfing over the height-of-land on the Kancamagus Highway while raising my middle finger to Osama bin Laden. To the best of my recollection, every one of those days was golden too, as indeed seems to be the case today.

September 9: A block of ice in Kyiv

"After the initial invasion [of Ukraine in 2022], a military operation that uses music, painting, and sculpture for "cognitive defense" put a life-sized iron heart in downtown Kyiv. The heart was cut out of a rusting steel plate and encased in a block of ice. Since it was winter, the ice would not melt on its own; only human hands could do that. People gathered around and put their hands on it for as long as they could stand and, person by person, day by day, the Ukrainian people melted the block of ice. I'm not a military man, but I would say that any country capable of thinking like that will be a tough country to defeat." -- Sebastian Junger on Substack

September 7: Get your one-dollar coin here, just $1.55!

(Plus shipping, of course...)

Donald Trump glories in breaking norms, most recently the norm that American coins don't show the face of an individual who's still alive. There's another that a dollar should buy a dollar's worth of something or other, though that's a norm that's probably been violated by every president. But the gold-colored President Trump coin can't do that, since it sells for $154.50 per hundred-coin bag, plus $12.95 for standard shipping. That works out to $1.67 each, meaning you experience the inflation of Trump's, Biden's, and Obama's presidencies, plus some of Duba's, all in a single purchase. And if instead you frame the Donbuck and hang it on the wall, it will continue to lose value with every passing year.

September 1: Will Putin tangle with NATO?

Certainly the Russian dictator has increased his "gray war" conflict with Western Europe in recent weeks, deploying his cyber minions to harass the Baltic governments (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which his predecessor Joe Stalin seized in 1939 as part of his deal with Hitler to divide Europe between the two dictatorships) and sending "accidental" drones onto German airports and other targets. Nor would he be the first to try to get out of an unsuccessful war by expanding it. When Hitler was talked out of invading Britain in 1940, he launched Operaton Barbarosa against Soviet Russia, a much more formidable foe. Similarly, Japan's army and air forces were stalled in China for ten years before it decided to change its luck by invading the Dutch Indies, Thailand, British Burma, and -- fatally -- Hawaii in December 1941. And Richard Nixon had a great plan to end the Vietnam War, which depended upon first invading Cambodia. Will Putin follow those bad examples?

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Get the latest news from Ukraine

Subscribe to the Kyiv Independent for as little as $5 a month

On this website: Front page | Flying Tigers | Chinese Air Force | Japan at War | Brewster Buffalo | Glen Edwards & the Flying Wing | Vietnam | War in the Modern World | The Spadguys Speak | Bluie West One | Poland 1939-1948 | Book Club | Book reviews | Question? | Google us | Website & webmaster | Site map

Other sites: Flying Tigers: the book | The blog | Daniel Ford's books | Reading Proust

Posted October 2026. Copyright © Daniel Ford 1994-2026; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their services. I never see those cookies.

October 4: A salute to Boeing

When Boeing's 737-MAX airliner was introduced some years ago, two fatal crashes marred the company's reputation and allowed its European rival to become the dominant provider of airframes to the world. I was asked if I'd fly on the 737-MAX, and I replied: "Sure, if it's flown by an American pilot" (most of whom are trained by the US military). Today I'd add another possibility: sure, if there's an Israeli plumber on board!

As we learn more about the assault on the Airdubai flight to Tel Aviv, and as the world's media overcomes its reluctance to connect the dots, we find that the Islamist co-pilot attacked the pilot with the crash axe that's required in every cockpit these days. The Indian pilot managed to open the door, allowing passengers and crew to storm the cockpit and subdue his attacker, so the heroic plumber could pull the airliner out of its suicide dive toward the ground. The plane by this time was at an angle of 39 degrees and a speed near Mach 1 -- the speed of sound. The recovery subjected the aircraft to three G's, meaning that it and everyone aboard, were suddenly subject to three times their normal weight. But the plane survived except for some damage to the rudder, and two relief pilots aboard were able to fly it for another hour and bring it down to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Some plumber! Some aircraft!

October 1: Don't mess with the Israelis!

Evoking memories of Flight 93, the hijacked American plane that crashed in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, brave passengers and crew aboard a Dubai airliner managed to save it and themselves from the same fate. Almost all the passengers were Israelis, including many children and four American dual citizens.

What seems to have happened is that the co-pilot (traditionally the officer in the righthand seat) stabbed the pilot, who fought back and unlocked the cockpit door so that passengers and crew could subdue the officer who was apparently attempting the crash the plane. Several of them were also bloodied. Fortunately, two relief pilots were also aboard and able to take the controls and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The war that began on October 7 three years ago is still ongoing, and though there are casualties, the Israelis are still winning. God bless them

September 25: Quote/Unquote

"According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers-more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025-doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP." (The Wall Street Journal)

September 23: A qualified cheer for Trump on Greenland

The huge, beautiful, icebound, and thinly populated island to our northeast has been integral to US defense for nearly a century, with a high point during the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. To his credit, President Trump recognized this, but in his trademark blundering way he succeeded in annoying the Greenlanders, their onetime colonial masters in Denmark, and most of the NATO alliance by proclaiming that we'd simply take it over as an American possession. What he now proposes instead -- to the extent that anyone can suss out what Mr Trump actually intends -- is much smarter and more likely to meet approval in Nuuk, Copenhagen, and Brussels. In short we get to expand our military and economic presence, and nobody in Moscow or Bejing need apply. (For more about our long relationship with the largest island in the world, see my little e-book about Bluie West One).

September 11: Remembering Nine/Eleven

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I climbed into my favorite Piper Cub -- built in 1946 but kitted out as a WW2 artillery spotter with extra-large windows -- and few northwest on a GPS line toward the little airport where I planned to top off the gas tank for my annual flight around the White Mountains. It was one of those golden days that reward us for having the fortitude to live in New Hampshire.

I was considering a touch-and-go at Wolfeboro, where I'd graduated from high school in 1950, when the little radio in my breast pocket chirped to life: a pilot across the state line in Maine was ready for takeoff. Somebody told him to abort. "I'm already off the ground," he said. "Well, turn back," said the other voice. "There's a national emergency and the airspace is closed."

There being no fuel pump at Wolfeboro, I decided to keep quiet and fly on to Moultonboro. (The Piper Cub was designed before electrics were standard, so my portable radio and plump green earphones were entirely optional.) I landed, gassed up, and secured the Cub to a fence, whereupon a golf cart drove up and I learned that "a 707" had crashed into a skyscraper in New York City, and American airspace was indeed closed until further notice.

Well, the Cub and I did in time get home, and on every 9/11 thereafter until I grounded myself at 80, I flew around the mountains, surfing over the height-of-land on the Kancamagus Highway while raising my middle finger to Osama bin Laden. To the best of my recollection, every one of those days was golden too, as indeed seems to be the case today.

September 9: A block of ice in Kyiv

"After the initial invasion [of Ukraine in 2022], a military operation that uses music, painting, and sculpture for "cognitive defense" put a life-sized iron heart in downtown Kyiv. The heart was cut out of a rusting steel plate and encased in a block of ice. Since it was winter, the ice would not melt on its own; only human hands could do that. People gathered around and put their hands on it for as long as they could stand and, person by person, day by day, the Ukrainian people melted the block of ice. I'm not a military man, but I would say that any country capable of thinking like that will be a tough country to defeat." -- Sebastian Junger on Substack

September 7: Get your one-dollar coin here, just $1.55!

(Plus shipping, of course...)

Donald Trump glories in breaking norms, most recently the norm that American coins don't show the face of an individual who's still alive. There's another that a dollar should buy a dollar's worth of something or other, though that's a norm that's probably been violated by every president. But the gold-colored President Trump coin can't do that, since it sells for $154.50 per hundred-coin bag, plus $12.95 for standard shipping. That works out to $1.67 each, meaning you experience the inflation of Trump's, Biden's, and Obama's presidencies, plus some of Duba's, all in a single purchase. And if instead you frame the Donbuck and hang it on the wall, it will continue to lose value with every passing year.

September 1: Will Putin tangle with NATO?

Certainly the Russian dictator has increased his "gray war" conflict with Western Europe in recent weeks, deploying his cyber minions to harass the Baltic governments (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which his predecessor Joe Stalin seized in 1939 as part of his deal with Hitler to divide Europe between the two dictatorships) and sending "accidental" drones onto German airports and other targets. Nor would he be the first to try to get out of an unsuccessful war by expanding it. When Hitler was talked out of invading Britain in 1940, he launched Operaton Barbarosa against Soviet Russia, a much more formidable foe. Similarly, Japan's army and air forces were stalled in China for ten years before it decided to change its luck by invading the Dutch Indies, Thailand, British Burma, and -- fatally -- Hawaii in December 1941. And Richard Nixon had a great plan to end the Vietnam War, which depended upon first invading Cambodia. Will Putin follow those bad examples?

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Get the latest news from Ukraine

Subscribe to the Kyiv Independent for as little as $5 a month

On this website: Front page | Flying Tigers | Chinese Air Force | Japan at War | Brewster Buffalo | Glen Edwards & the Flying Wing | Vietnam | War in the Modern World | The Spadguys Speak | Bluie West One | Poland 1939-1948 | Book Club | Book reviews | Question? | Google us | Website & webmaster | Site map

Other sites: Flying Tigers: the book | The blog | Daniel Ford's books | Reading Proust

Posted October 2026. Copyright © Daniel Ford 1994-2026; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their services. I never see those cookies.

October 4: A salute to Boeing

When Boeing's 737-MAX airliner was introduced some years ago, two fatal crashes marred the company's reputation and allowed its European rival to become the dominant provider of airframes to the world. I was asked if I'd fly on the 737-MAX, and I replied: "Sure, if it's flown by an American pilot" (most of whom are trained by the US military). Today I'd add another possibility: sure, if there's an Israeli plumber on board!

As we learn more about the assault on the Airdubai flight to Tel Aviv, and as the world's media overcomes its reluctance to connect the dots, we find that the Islamist co-pilot attacked the pilot with the crash axe that's required in every cockpit these days. The Indian pilot managed to open the door, allowing passengers and crew to storm the cockpit and subdue his attacker, so the heroic plumber could pull the airliner out of its suicide dive toward the ground. The plane by this time was at an angle of 39 degrees and a speed near Mach 1 -- the speed of sound. The recovery subjected the aircraft to three G's, meaning that it and everyone aboard, were suddenly subject to three times their normal weight. But the plane survived except for some damage to the rudder, and two relief pilots aboard were able to fly it for another hour and bring it down to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Some plumber! Some aircraft!

October 1: Don't mess with the Israelis!

Evoking memories of Flight 93, the hijacked American plane that crashed in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, brave passengers and crew aboard a Dubai airliner managed to save it and themselves from the same fate. Almost all the passengers were Israelis, including many children and four American dual citizens.

What seems to have happened is that the co-pilot (traditionally the officer in the righthand seat) stabbed the pilot, who fought back and unlocked the cockpit door so that passengers and crew could subdue the officer who was apparently attempting the crash the plane. Several of them were also bloodied. Fortunately, two relief pilots were also aboard and able to take the controls and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The war that began on October 7 three years ago is still ongoing, and though there are casualties, the Israelis are still winning. God bless them

September 25: Quote/Unquote

"According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers-more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025-doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP." (The Wall Street Journal)

September 23: A qualified cheer for Trump on Greenland

The huge, beautiful, icebound, and thinly populated island to our northeast has been integral to US defense for nearly a century, with a high point during the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. To his credit, President Trump recognized this, but in his trademark blundering way he succeeded in annoying the Greenlanders, their onetime colonial masters in Denmark, and most of the NATO alliance by proclaiming that we'd simply take it over as an American possession. What he now proposes instead -- to the extent that anyone can suss out what Mr Trump actually intends -- is much smarter and more likely to meet approval in Nuuk, Copenhagen, and Brussels. In short we get to expand our military and economic presence, and nobody in Moscow or Bejing need apply. (For more about our long relationship with the largest island in the world, see my little e-book about Bluie West One).

September 11: Remembering Nine/Eleven

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I climbed into my favorite Piper Cub -- built in 1946 but kitted out as a WW2 artillery spotter with extra-large windows -- and few northwest on a GPS line toward the little airport where I planned to top off the gas tank for my annual flight around the White Mountains. It was one of those golden days that reward us for having the fortitude to live in New Hampshire.

I was considering a touch-and-go at Wolfeboro, where I'd graduated from high school in 1950, when the little radio in my breast pocket chirped to life: a pilot across the state line in Maine was ready for takeoff. Somebody told him to abort. "I'm already off the ground," he said. "Well, turn back," said the other voice. "There's a national emergency and the airspace is closed."

There being no fuel pump at Wolfeboro, I decided to keep quiet and fly on to Moultonboro. (The Piper Cub was designed before electrics were standard, so my portable radio and plump green earphones were entirely optional.) I landed, gassed up, and secured the Cub to a fence, whereupon a golf cart drove up and I learned that "a 707" had crashed into a skyscraper in New York City, and American airspace was indeed closed until further notice.

Well, the Cub and I did in time get home, and on every 9/11 thereafter until I grounded myself at 80, I flew around the mountains, surfing over the height-of-land on the Kancamagus Highway while raising my middle finger to Osama bin Laden. To the best of my recollection, every one of those days was golden too, as indeed seems to be the case today.

September 9: A block of ice in Kyiv

"After the initial invasion [of Ukraine in 2022], a military operation that uses music, painting, and sculpture for "cognitive defense" put a life-sized iron heart in downtown Kyiv. The heart was cut out of a rusting steel plate and encased in a block of ice. Since it was winter, the ice would not melt on its own; only human hands could do that. People gathered around and put their hands on it for as long as they could stand and, person by person, day by day, the Ukrainian people melted the block of ice. I'm not a military man, but I would say that any country capable of thinking like that will be a tough country to defeat." -- Sebastian Junger on Substack

September 7: Get your one-dollar coin here, just $1.55!

(Plus shipping, of course...)

Donald Trump glories in breaking norms, most recently the norm that American coins don't show the face of an individual who's still alive. There's another that a dollar should buy a dollar's worth of something or other, though that's a norm that's probably been violated by every president. But the gold-colored President Trump coin can't do that, since it sells for $154.50 per hundred-coin bag, plus $12.95 for standard shipping. That works out to $1.67 each, meaning you experience the inflation of Trump's, Biden's, and Obama's presidencies, plus some of Duba's, all in a single purchase. And if instead you frame the Donbuck and hang it on the wall, it will continue to lose value with every passing year.

September 1: Will Putin tangle with NATO?

Certainly the Russian dictator has increased his "gray war" conflict with Western Europe in recent weeks, deploying his cyber minions to harass the Baltic governments (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which his predecessor Joe Stalin seized in 1939 as part of his deal with Hitler to divide Europe between the two dictatorships) and sending "accidental" drones onto German airports and other targets. Nor would he be the first to try to get out of an unsuccessful war by expanding it. When Hitler was talked out of invading Britain in 1940, he launched Operaton Barbarosa against Soviet Russia, a much more formidable foe. Similarly, Japan's army and air forces were stalled in China for ten years before it decided to change its luck by invading the Dutch Indies, Thailand, British Burma, and -- fatally -- Hawaii in December 1941. And Richard Nixon had a great plan to end the Vietnam War, which depended upon first invading Cambodia. Will Putin follow those bad examples?

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Get the latest news from Ukraine

Subscribe to the Kyiv Independent for as little as $5 a month

On this website: Front page | Flying Tigers | Chinese Air Force | Japan at War | Brewster Buffalo | Glen Edwards & the Flying Wing | Vietnam | War in the Modern World | The Spadguys Speak | Bluie West One | Poland 1939-1948 | Book Club | Book reviews | Question? | Google us | Website & webmaster | Site map

Other sites: Flying Tigers: the book | The blog | Daniel Ford's books | Reading Proust

Posted October 2026. Copyright © Daniel Ford 1994-2026; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their services. I never see those cookies.

October 4: A salute to Boeing

When Boeing's 737-MAX airliner was introduced some years ago, two fatal crashes marred the company's reputation and allowed its European rival to become the dominant provider of airframes to the world. I was asked if I'd fly on the 737-MAX, and I replied: "Sure, if it's flown by an American pilot" (most of whom are trained by the US military). Today I'd add another possibility: sure, if there's an Israeli plumber on board!

As we learn more about the assault on the Airdubai flight to Tel Aviv, and as the world's media overcomes its reluctance to connect the dots, we find that the Islamist co-pilot attacked the pilot with the crash axe that's required in every cockpit these days. The Indian pilot managed to open the door, allowing passengers and crew to storm the cockpit and subdue his attacker, so the heroic plumber could pull the airliner out of its suicide dive toward the ground. The plane by this time was at an angle of 39 degrees and a speed near Mach 1 -- the speed of sound. The recovery subjected the aircraft to three G's, meaning that it and everyone aboard, were suddenly subject to three times their normal weight. But the plane survived except for some damage to the rudder, and two relief pilots aboard were able to fly it for another hour and bring it down to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Some plumber! Some aircraft!

October 1: Don't mess with the Israelis!

Evoking memories of Flight 93, the hijacked American plane that crashed in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, brave passengers and crew aboard a Dubai airliner managed to save it and themselves from the same fate. Almost all the passengers were Israelis, including many children and four American dual citizens.

What seems to have happened is that the co-pilot (traditionally the officer in the righthand seat) stabbed the pilot, who fought back and unlocked the cockpit door so that passengers and crew could subdue the officer who was apparently attempting the crash the plane. Several of them were also bloodied. Fortunately, two relief pilots were also aboard and able to take the controls and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The war that began on October 7 three years ago is still ongoing, and though there are casualties, the Israelis are still winning. God bless them

September 25: Quote/Unquote

"According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers-more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025-doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP." (The Wall Street Journal)

September 23: A qualified cheer for Trump on Greenland

The huge, beautiful, icebound, and thinly populated island to our northeast has been integral to US defense for nearly a century, with a high point during the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. To his credit, President Trump recognized this, but in his trademark blundering way he succeeded in annoying the Greenlanders, their onetime colonial masters in Denmark, and most of the NATO alliance by proclaiming that we'd simply take it over as an American possession. What he now proposes instead -- to the extent that anyone can suss out what Mr Trump actually intends -- is much smarter and more likely to meet approval in Nuuk, Copenhagen, and Brussels. In short we get to expand our military and economic presence, and nobody in Moscow or Bejing need apply. (For more about our long relationship with the largest island in the world, see my little e-book about Bluie West One).

September 11: Remembering Nine/Eleven

Twenty-five years ago this morning, I climbed into my favorite Piper Cub -- built in 1946 but kitted out as a WW2 artillery spotter with extra-large windows -- and few northwest on a GPS line toward the little airport where I planned to top off the gas tank for my annual flight around the White Mountains. It was one of those golden days that reward us for having the fortitude to live in New Hampshire.

I was considering a touch-and-go at Wolfeboro, where I'd graduated from high school in 1950, when the little radio in my breast pocket chirped to life: a pilot across the state line in Maine was ready for takeoff. Somebody told him to abort. "I'm already off the ground," he said. "Well, turn back," said the other voice. "There's a national emergency and the airspace is closed."

There being no fuel pump at Wolfeboro, I decided to keep quiet and fly on to Moultonboro. (The Piper Cub was designed before electrics were standard, so my portable radio and plump green earphones were entirely optional.) I landed, gassed up, and secured the Cub to a fence, whereupon a golf cart drove up and I learned that "a 707" had crashed into a skyscraper in New York City, and American airspace was indeed closed until further notice.

Well, the Cub and I did in time get home, and on every 9/11 thereafter until I grounded myself at 80, I flew around the mountains, surfing over the height-of-land on the Kancamagus Highway while raising my middle finger to Osama bin Laden. To the best of my recollection, every one of those days was golden too, as indeed seems to be the case today.

September 9: A block of ice in Kyiv

"After the initial invasion [of Ukraine in 2022], a military operation that uses music, painting, and sculpture for "cognitive defense" put a life-sized iron heart in downtown Kyiv. The heart was cut out of a rusting steel plate and encased in a block of ice. Since it was winter, the ice would not melt on its own; only human hands could do that. People gathered around and put their hands on it for as long as they could stand and, person by person, day by day, the Ukrainian people melted the block of ice. I'm not a military man, but I would say that any country capable of thinking like that will be a tough country to defeat." -- Sebastian Junger on Substack

September 7: Get your one-dollar coin here, just $1.55!

(Plus shipping, of course...)

Donald Trump glories in breaking norms, most recently the norm that American coins don't show the face of an individual who's still alive. There's another that a dollar should buy a dollar's worth of something or other, though that's a norm that's probably been violated by every president. But the gold-colored President Trump coin can't do that, since it sells for $154.50 per hundred-coin bag, plus $12.95 for standard shipping. That works out to $1.67 each, meaning you experience the inflation of Trump's, Biden's, and Obama's presidencies, plus some of Duba's, all in a single purchase. And if instead you frame the Donbuck and hang it on the wall, it will continue to lose value with every passing year.

September 1: Will Putin tangle with NATO?

Certainly the Russian dictator has increased his "gray war" conflict with Western Europe in recent weeks, deploying his cyber minions to harass the Baltic governments (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which his predecessor Joe Stalin seized in 1939 as part of his deal with Hitler to divide Europe between the two dictatorships) and sending "accidental" drones onto German airports and other targets. Nor would he be the first to try to get out of an unsuccessful war by expanding it. When Hitler was talked out of invading Britain in 1940, he launched Operaton Barbarosa against Soviet Russia, a much more formidable foe. Similarly, Japan's army and air forces were stalled in China for ten years before it decided to change its luck by invading the Dutch Indies, Thailand, British Burma, and -- fatally -- Hawaii in December 1941. And Richard Nixon had a great plan to end the Vietnam War, which depended upon first invading Cambodia. Will Putin follow those bad examples?

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Get the latest news from Ukraine

Subscribe to the Kyiv Independent for as little as $5 a month

On this website: Front page | Flying Tigers | Chinese Air Force | Japan at War | Brewster Buffalo | Glen Edwards & the Flying Wing | Vietnam | War in the Modern World | The Spadguys Speak | Bluie West One | Poland 1939-1948 | Book Club | Book reviews | Question? | Google us | Website & webmaster | Site map

Other sites: Flying Tigers: the book | The blog | Daniel Ford's books | Reading Proust

Posted October 2026. Copyright © Daniel Ford 1994-2026; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their services. I never see those cookies.