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Hi Tony, thanks for the response! The only benefit to the 64 bit would be that we could use modern computers to run both the scenario editor and to run the game itself. I'll definitely check out the accessory programs!

Do we have that rare intersection of unmet-need, essential requirement, and unexpected answer? Maybe. We’re not the first, but we kind of wandered into it on yesterday’s Midrats Podcast. I’d like to set the table first. A saying I first heard in my 30s, and that with each passing year appears to be more and more a fact of life in the opinion arena, is that once you are tired of saying something is when people are finally starting to listen. Both here in writing and the UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, along with the Midrats Podcast, one requirement that needs to be addressed as we prepare for a Great Pacific War, and that continues to rise to the top of my list, is to Arm the Auxiliaries. The accountants won the battle decades ago, I know. We’ve assumed too much about our supremacy at sea for too long, I know. We’ve been exceptionally lucky, I know. We have long been told that there are not enough destroyers to escort auxiliaries, support, and supply vessels on the high seas, I know. We do not have frigates designed to perform escort duties across the threat spectrum, nor shall we have them in sufficient numbers in the foreseeable future, I know. I understand USNS compared to USS. I don’t care. I can’t change the past, I can only work on the now and plan to make the future better. Many of our auxiliaries are, in some strange self-delusional cope, “configured for, but not fitted with”—built with the structural reinforcement, utility connections, and physical space required to receive military weapons, sensors, or specialized defensive systems later, but without having those systems permanently installed. Indeed, the systems are not even in a warehouse somewhere, nor are there any personnel assigned to run and maintain them should they be needed. Other critically important auxiliaries don’t even have that cope. They only have hope. This state of affairs is inviting tragedy and disaster. We all know this, yet we continue on, just taunting fate. There is not yet a legal mandate to address this. I’d like to see someone in authority clearly state that there is an ethical issue here, but I’ve yet to see it. In the next layer down, I am just speaking for myself. Morality refers to personal or cultural beliefs about right and wrong, and I’m OK with that. On Sunday’s Midrats, I had the urge to put a marker down, and so I did at about the 32 minute mark. “I think it’s immoral to send a ship in harm’s way where the Sailors on that ship aren’t even given a rudimentary capability to defend themselves.” - CDR Salamander on the 25OCT2026 #Midrats Podcast. OK. Stated and noted. “No ability to defend yourself” is the ‘what’. “It is immoral” is the ‘so what’. What is a realistic ‘now what’ to close the reflection model? Last month we heard this, Today, the U.S. Navy announced its plans to procure 30 Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels following the completion of Phase I at-sea testing marking a key milestone for the program and demonstrating the Department’s commitment to deliver asymmetric capability to Fleet warfighters to counter evolving threats. We’ve been waiting for this for a while. What does this offer? Let’s look at Saronic’s 180’ Marauder. As described by Saronic, Marauder is a 180' Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) designed to host and deliver significant capabilities across complex maritime environments. Capable of carrying up to 150MT in four 40' ISO containers, eight 20' ISO containers, or other modular payload configurations, Marauder is Saronic's premier platform for logistics and at-sea payload deployment. You can do a lot with that kind of square footage. We have already figured out six-ways-to-Sunday how to militarize ISO containers. If the aviation side of the house can have Loyal Wingman, then we surely can have our Loyal Escort. Why not? What other options will be available sooner? Yes, the long pole in the tent that I would like to have briefed first are: Sensors Communication Control Where is the man-in-the-loop CIC? (Don’t say remote; it must be aboard the escorted ship or ships) Sustainment Those are workable. Again, as we covered in the podcast, this is not an area defense solution. Just a basic self-defense to give an auxiliary a fighting chance like the Neosho had. It cannot cover every threat, but it can address some of them. The first iteration will be inadequate, but by taking and working with inadequate sooner, we have the better faster. Even the better won’t be the ideal solution, but we are not going to see an ideal solution. We have to contend with available solutions, and that is fine. Make no mistake, the need for sealift to head west of the International Date Line in the event of war will be greater than our ability to properly escort them, and this simple fact will be true for the foreseeable future. We can take action to mitigate the risk. Until better solutions can be found, I can see this as an acceptable one. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has put the Paladin, a heavy counter-drone multirotor built by California-based Zone 5 Technologies, through training with Joint Interagency Task Force 401 at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on Oct. 8, with the drone carrying a Gen12 counter-drone launcher that fires net rounds to entangle and bring down hostile drones, […]View the full article

German defense AI company Helsing on Oct. 26 unveiled Contra, an autonomous, AI-controlled air defense system designed to protect countries against large-scale drone and missile attacks, along with two new interceptor missiles, the jet-powered AD-1 Inferno and the rocket-powered AD-2 Ambush, the company announced. Helsing said Contra fuses data from sensors and weapons into a […]View the full article

Britain’s Royal Navy could be left with just one frigate available for operations at any given time next year, as two more of its five remaining Type 23 frigates are expected to be declared unseaworthy within months, leaving three ships in service in 2027 with one at sea, one in training and one in maintenance, […]View the full article

Japan Ground Self-Defense Force troops deployed the new Type 25 surface-to-ship missile system to the Ōnohara training area in Nagasaki Prefecture and rehearsed anti-ship strikes using targeting information from U.S. forces and higher headquarters during Keen Sword 27, Japan’s largest joint field exercise with the United States, the GSDF’s Western Army said. The Western Army […]View the full article

A Chinese H-6KG bomber has been seen carrying what appears to be a new large electronic jamming pod that closely resembles the pods carried by the J-16D, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s dedicated electronic warfare jet, military aviation analyst Andreas Rupprecht reported on Oct. 25. Rupprecht, who closely tracks Chinese military aircraft, said the […]View the full article

A computer simulation run by South Korean and U.S. forces during this summer’s Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise ended with North Korean troops breaking through allied defensive lines and advancing to the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, a result that has deepened a dispute over when Seoul should take wartime command of […]View the full article

Posts on X lamenting the state of Japan’s Kawasaki P-1 maritime patrol fleet have drawn more than 100,000 views, as Japanese aviation enthusiasts urged the public to spread the word about the hardships facing Maritime Self-Defense Force units after reports that some newly delivered P-1s are arriving without their patrol equipment and are being stripped […]View the full article

South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has barred LIG Defense & Aerospace, the maker of the Cheongung air defense missile formerly known as LIG Nex1, from bidding on government contracts for two years after prosecutors accused the company of paying a DAPA official hundreds of millions of won in bribes during weapons development tenders, […]View the full article

Fighters from a local armed group in Myanmar have destroyed several Chinese-made ZSL-92 infantry fighting vehicles belonging to the Myanmar Army using first-person-view (FPV) drones, open-source analyst Jesus Roman reported on Oct. 24, attributing the strikes to Monywa Scout, a resistance group named after Monywa, the main city of Myanmar’s Sagaing Region in the country’s […]View the full article

Chinese Type 08 infantry fighting vehicles fitted with anti-drone roof cages and side grilles carried assault troops during Karakoram 2026, the first joint army training between China and Pakistan, now under way in Korla in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Oct. 21. The exercise has moved into its main drill […]View the full article

Israel’s Elbit Systems has won contracts worth about $200 million from an unnamed country in the Asia-Pacific region to supply helicopter targeting sensors, cockpit head-up displays and support for airborne combat training systems, the company announced on Oct. 26. The work will be carried out over up to five years. Elbit did not identify the […]View the full article

A photo of what is said to be a brand-new Il-78 aerial refueling tanker, freshly painted dark gray, has appeared online, and a marking on its tail that resembles part of the Chinese air force insignia has revived speculation that Russia is building the tankers for China. The image was shared on the Sino Defence […]View the full article

Of course it could, those who hold the rights to develop the game would have to do that. They haven't even released the game we handed them so either they are working on something big or have left it sitting on the shelf rusting. Anyway, to what end 64-bit? 32-bit has not held the game back, when the scenario editor was 16-bit, sure, but we ported that to 32-bits long ago. We can almost infinitely expand the game via ExportDLLs at this point. You should see a couple of accessory programs from us for HC in time for Christmas, one of them is mostly ready, mainly in "one more thing" mode at this point.

I know that in the past, it was too much work to recode this large program from 32 bit to 64 bit. With the advent of AI and it's ability to write certain code, could Harpoon Commanders Addition be updated into a fully 64 bit program?

No, you don’t want to put up Halloween decorations this afternoon, you want to continue to avoid it until the last minute…and instead plan to join Mark and me from 5-6 PM for another LIVE Midrats Podcast! If its happening in the national security arena and its worth talking about, we’ll cover it. You can listen live and join the studio chat at this link. If you are reading this after the show, check back on the Substack page later Sunday night for the podcast audio links. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

A Russian drone unit fired about 100 Lancet loitering munitions over three months and hit only three targets, according to pro-Russian militant Pavel Gubarev, who said Ukrainian air defenses brought down most of the rest. The account points to a sharp drop in the effectiveness of one of Russia’s most widely used strike drones, Ukrainian […]View the full article

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has opened a tender to buy Skydio X10D small drones, the American-made reconnaissance quadcopter already ordered by the thousands by the U.S. Army, with an estimated budget of £120,000 (about $160,700) excluding VAT, according to a notice on the Defence Sourcing Portal. The tender was issued by Navy Commercial, the Royal […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG 91) has entered General Dynamics NASSCO’s shipyard in San Diego for a second depot modernization period that will make it the first warship to receive the Raytheon AN/SPY-6(V)4 radar, the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Maritime said. The availability will also make Pinckney the first ship fitted with […]View the full article

DARPA, a central research and development organization within the United States Department of War, put four autonomous unmanned ground vehicles through their first end-to-end test at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on Oct. 15, sending them as a team from a satellite-imagery tip all the way to a simulated strike on an enemy position, with a human […]View the full article

Russia’s Amur Shipbuilding Plant has launched the multipurpose corvette Grozny, the fifth Project 20380 warship it has built for the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet, the fleet’s press service said. The ceremony took place on Oct. 23 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia’s Far East, more than five years after the ship was laid down on Aug. 23, […]View the full article

A French Navy Atlantique 2 maritime patrol aircraft has deployed to Romania and is supporting search and rescue efforts after a wave of drone attacks on merchant ships off the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts, while a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon has begun patrolling the Black Sea at Bulgaria’s request. The Atlantique 2 arrived in Constanța […]View the full article

Philadelphia-based Raptor Defense Company is advancing in two U.S. Army programs with PIT VIPER, a small modular wheeled unmanned ground vehicle the company calls a “Personal Combat Vehicle” and designs to be fielded at the level of the individual soldier, the company announced. Raptor was selected for Phase II of GroundBreaker 1, a joint unmanned […]View the full article

Ukraine has rejected Elon Musk’s claim that its military broke Starlink’s terms of service by using the civilian satellite network for offensive drone strikes, with a presidential adviser saying that restrictions SpaceX placed on the service in February make such use physically impossible. Musk made the accusation on X on Oct. 24, the same day […]View the full article