Panama City welcomes new leaders in inauguration ceremony
PANAMA CITY, Fla (WMBB) – Panama City is welcoming new leadership: Mayor Allan Branch, Ward One Commissioner Robbie Hughes and Ward Four Commissioner Josh Street were all sworn into office on Wednesday.
City, county, and state leaders all attended the inauguration ceremony and offered support to the trio.
Hughes and Branch are both Panama City natives and talked about how they're excited to begin serving their hometowns in a different way.
Lynn Haven Elementary School students celebrate last day of school with a water play day
'You can love something and acknowledge that there's challenges and hurdles and there's flaws in it. Since Hurricane Michael, my goodness, we've come so far, the progress we've made. We've challenged ourselves. We've got progress happening in certain parts of the city, we need that to echo in the rest of Panama City. You can be proud of yourself, but not satisfied,' Mayor Allan Branch said.
'I'm not going to try to worry about saving my seat for the next–I'm not going to make a decision for four years from now. That doesn't matter. This is a job. A seat's a seat. I'm here to serve you guys. And I promise you every day you lay your head on the pillow, just know that I have done everything that I can possible, in working with this team and City Hall and staff to make the quality of life better in Panama City,' Ward 1 Commissioner Robbie Hughes said.
The new commission's first meeting will be June 10.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Forbes
3 days ago
- Forbes
Ukraine Wears Down Russian Artillery, But Drone Threat Is Growing
A destroyed Russian self-propelled gun Headlines early on in the invasion warned about the sheer power of Russian artillery, with advances following massive 'fire curtain' barrages. Russian artillery was estimated outgun Ukrainian by a factor of ten, and President Zelensky repeatedly appealed to allies for more shells. The situation has changed, but as 'Michael,' Commander of the Typhoon drone unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, told me, the artillery has not gone away -- and drones are a growing threat. Ukraine has been highly successful at countering Russian artillery. Any gun firing can be spotted by counter-artillery radar, like the U.S. -made AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder, which tracks shells in flight and calculates their source. New Ukrainian-made acoustic detectors which recently went into mass production are likely to figure increasingly. U.S. delivering two AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radar units to Ukraine in 2015 'The radar is typically the first step. It can detect the approximate area of a firing position, but it's not precise,' says Michael. 'Depending on distance and terrain, it may narrow the location down to a 200-by-200-meter area, which is too broad for a direct strike.' Pinpointing the exact firing location is a job for the drones. 'Drones are essential for confirming the exact location of artillery,' says Michael. 'We use fixed-wing drones, some with real-time video, others capturing high-resolution photos, for wide-area reconnaissance. These platforms allow us to assess whether the artillery is still in position and provide up-to-date imagery.' Visual observation using the drone's powerful zoom cameras is usually the best way to find artillery. 'Artillery is easiest to spot when it's firing -- muzzle flashes, smoke, or movement of the crew make it visible,' says Michael. 'Also, we can identify the artillery by its silhouette, even if it's partially hidden somewhere in the trees or buildings. In covered areas, we look for signs like tracks, disturbed ground, or heat if thermal optics are available.' When a drone operator positively confirms the exact location of a Russian artillery piece, it needs to be struck rapidly before it can move. In the past this would have been a matter of counter battery fire, using artillery to destroy artillery. Now there are other options. Michael says that counter-battery fire is still used, with a drone operator giving the co-ordinates of the target to the gun crew and calling out adjustments needed to put shells on target. But much of the counter-battery work ss carried out by drones. 'FPV drones, both quadcopters and fixed-wing types, have become more effective than traditional artillery in terms of precision engagement,' says Michael. 'A high-quality FPV drone for now is the most effective way to destroy the artillery system.' Ukrainian volunteers with DARTS fixed-wing FPV Several different types are used depending on the range, with fixed-wing FPVs typically having longer reach. Surprisingly, drones are preferred because they are faster. It is highly counter-intuitive that 100 mph drone will reach a target quicker than a 700-mph artillery shell, but what counts is how long it takes to hit the target. 'With FPV drones, even though the flight time can be minutes depending on the distance, the first strike often hits,' Michael explains. 'With artillery it often takes several rounds to hit the target, especially in dynamic conditions.' Dynamic conditions may mean a situation where a self-propelled gun fires off a few rounds and speeds away down a track. An artillery shell arriving after thirty seconds will miss by hundreds of meters. A drone which arrives later can spot the vehicle, follow it, and carry out a precision strike. Towed guns are less likely to get away. But they are harder targets because they are not packed with fuel and ammunition like self-propelled guns. A follow-up FPV from Bords of Magyar inspects damage to a Russian howitzer, confirming the barrel ... More has been perforated making the weapon useless 'To effectively disable them, you have to hit specific parts—like the breech, recoil system, or the towing vehicle,' says Michael. The preferred technique has been previously seen in videos from the Birds of Magyar unit, with FPV drones hovering a few inches away from a gun barrel before detonating. Scoring a hit requires a high level of operator skill as well as a robust technical setup. 'Maintaining a reliable video signal is critical.' says Michael. 'Without a stable connection between the drone and ground operator, it's hard to carry out the kind of pinpoint strike needed for such a small target,' Fiber drones, which provide a high-resolution image and are not affected by interference or terrain, and which Ukraine is starting to deploy at scale, may help with this. Afterwards reconnaissance drones can confirm whether a kill has been scored or whether further action is required. But while Ukraine claims to have destroyed a large number of Russian artillery pieces, a claim supported by the rate at which the stockpiles in Russia are being depleted, the Russians are still able to maintain a significant artillery forced at the front. Some 2024 estimates suggested that Russia might start running low this year, it has not happened yet. Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi says Russia's long-range striking power has been halved, but on the front line there are still plenty of shells coming down. 'Their artillery remains a serious and ongoing threat,' says Michael. And while Ukrainian interceptors have brought down thousands of the Russian reconnaissance drones that find targets for their artillery, these are still also very much present. 'As for Russian recon drones, there's no sign of a shortage,' says Michael. 'Recon drones are constantly present in the air.' Meanwhile another sort of drone is giving more concern. The Russian group Sudoplatov produces large numbers of FPVs 'What has changed is the rise in the use of FPV drones,' says Michael. 'Currently, we're observing several hundred FPV strikes per day. These drones are increasingly taking over roles that would have traditionally involved artillery fire, especially for high-precision or time-sensitive targets.' [My emphasis] What is interesting here is that many commentators have argued that Ukraine only uses drones because it lacks artillery. Now it seems that Russia, which still seems to have abundant artillery, is also leaning increasingly into drones for long-range strikes. Like Ukraine, Russia has been ramping up FPV production at pace, and plans to build 2 million in 2025, compared to 3 million artillery shells. At this rate, both countries will soon be fielding more FPVs than artillery shells. Russia's artillery is rapidly being eroded as the thousands of guns in storage are put into service and destroyed. When it is gone, the days of massed firepower will have passed. But the era of massed precision drone strikes will just be beginning.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Yahoo
Israel's Bold, Risky Attack
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. At the end of the classic 1972 film The Godfather, the new don of the family, Michael Corleone, attends a baptism while his men wipe out the heads of the other New York mafia families—all of them Michael's enemies, and all intending one day to do him harm. Rather than wait for their eventual attacks, Michael dispatched them himself. 'Today, I settled all family business,' Michael says to his traitorous brother-in-law, before having him killed. Tonight, the Israelis launched a broad, sweeping attack on Iran that seems like an attempt to settle, so to speak, all family business. The Israeli government has characterized this offensive as a 'preemptive' strike on Iran: 'We are now in a strategic window of opportunity and close to a point of no return, and we had no choice but to take action,' an Israeli military official told reporters. Israeli spokespeople suggest that these attacks, named Operation Rising Lion, could go on for weeks. But calling this a 'preemptive' strike is questionable. The Israelis, from what we know so far, are engaged in a preventive war: They are removing the source of a threat by surprise, on their own timetable and on terms they find favorable. They may be justified in doing so, but such actions carry great moral and practical risks. Preemptive attacks, in both international law and the historical traditions of war, are spoiling attacks, meant to thwart an imminent attack. In both tradition and law, this form of self-defense is perfectly defensible, similar to the principle in domestic law that when a person cocks a fist or pulls a gun, the intended victim does not need to stand there and wait to get punched or shot. Preventive attacks, however, have long been viewed in the international community as both illegal and immoral. History is full of ill-advised preventive actions, including the Spartan invasion of Athens in the 5th century B.C., the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the American war on Iraq in 2002. Sometimes, such wars are the product of hubris, miscalculation, or plain fear, but they all share the common trait that a choice was made to go to war based on a threat that was real, but not imminent. The Israelis, ironically, are in the case books as the clearest example of a legitimate preemptive attack. In 1967, Israel got the jump on an Arab coalition that had been so obvious in its march to war that it was literally broadcasting its intention to destroy Israel while its troops massed for an offensive. Indeed, international law experts have noted that the 1967 war is so clear that it is not much use as a precedent, because most enemies are not blockheaded enough to assemble an army and declare their intention to invade. (Of course, the Israelis could argue that they are already at war with Iran, a country that has launched many missiles at them and directed years of proxy attacks on their people and their military, which would be a far stronger case.) Most threats, instead, are a judgment call based on timing. What constitutes an imminent threat? The Israelis seem to have made the same judgment with respect to Iran that America made in Iraq: A regime that has expressed genocidal intent is trying to gain nuclear weapons; possession of nuclear weapons will mean, with absolute certainty, use of nuclear weapons; and therefore, waiting until the threat gels and becomes obvious is too dangerous. Such a calculation is not irrational, especially in the nuclear age, when armies no longer need to mobilize for nations to inflict ghastly damage on each other. To show infinite patience until a threat—especially a nuclear threat—becomes so obvious that the window for action shrinks to hours or minutes requires the coldest of cold blood. Few world leaders are willing to take such risks. 'We no longer live in a world,' President John F. Kennedy said presciently during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, 'where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.' But if the Israelis are setting the terms of the debate by claiming that they are embarking on a preemptive war—and not a preventive one—then they will have to make the case to the international community that the threat from the Iranian nuclear program required action now, without any further delay. Jerusalem may well be able to make this argument; if the Iranians were, as the Israelis claim, just a few weeks from assembling a small nuclear arsenal, and the ability to strike that capacity was receding from Israeli reach, then the argument for preemption is strong—especially because Iranian leaders have so often expressed their wish to wipe Israel from the map. That rationale is complicated now by the sweep and breadth of the Israeli offensive. Several senior Iranian leaders, including from the Iranian General Staff, are reportedly dead, which suggests that Israel's goal might be decapitation of the Iranian regime, perhaps with the aim of regime change. If that is the case, then the Israelis should not box themselves in—as the Americans unwisely did in 2002—with shaky rationales about preemption. They should simply admit that they have reached a decision to end, once and for all, the existential threat to Israel from Iran. Iran's history and its unrelenting enmity to Israel could justify such a war. A decade ago, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the 'barbaric, wolflike' and 'infanticidal' Israeli regime has 'no cure but to be annihilated.' The Iranians cannot now complain if the Israelis are taking them seriously; the United States has launched military actions over far weaker threats to American security. But such decisions are laden with immense danger, especially because—as the great student of armed conflict, Carl von Clausewitz, warned long ago—there is no such thing as utter finality in war. The Israeli campaign may be necessary, but so far, it seems less like a preemptive action and more like something that another philosopher of war, Michael Corleone, would easily have recognized. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
13-06-2025
- Atlantic
Israel's Preventive War
At the end of the classic 1972 film The Godfather, the new don of the family, Michael Corleone, attends a baptism while his men wipe out the heads of the other New York mafia families—all of them Michael's enemies, and all intending one day to do him harm. Rather than wait for their eventual attacks, Michael dispatched them himself. 'Today, I settled all family business,' Michael says to his traitorous brother-in-law, before having him killed. Tonight, the Israelis launched a broad sweeping attack on Iran that seems like an attempt to settle, so to speak, all family business. The Israeli government has characterized this offensive as a 'preemptive' strike on Iran: 'We are now in a strategic window of opportunity and close to a point of no return, and we had no choice but to take action,' an Israeli military official told reporters. Israeli spokespeople suggest that these attacks, named Operation Rising Lion, could go on for weeks. But calling this a 'preemptive' strike is questionable. The Israelis, from what we know so far, are engaged in a preventive war: They are removing the source of a threat by surprise, on their own timetable and on terms they find favorable. They may be justified in doing so, but such actions carry great moral and practical risks. Preemptive attacks, in both international law and the historical traditions of war, are spoiling attacks, meant to thwart an imminent attack. In both tradition and law, this form of self-defense is perfectly defensible, similar to the principle in domestic law that when a person cocks a fist or pulls a gun, the intended victim does need to stand there and wait to get punched or shot. Preventive attacks, however, have long been viewed in the international community as both illegal and immoral. History is full of ill-advised preventive actions, including the Spartan invasion of Athens in the 5th century B.C., the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the American war on Iraq in 2002. Sometimes, such wars are the product of hubris, miscalculation, or plain fear, but they all share the common trait that a choice was made to go to war based on a threat that was real, but not imminent. The Israelis, ironically, are in the case books as the clearest example of a legitimate preemptive attack. In 1967, Israel got the jump on an Arab coalition that had been so obvious in its march to war that it was literally broadcasting its intention to destroy Israel while its troops massed for an offensive. Indeed, international law experts have noted that the 1967 is so clear that it is not much use as a precedent, because most enemies are not blockheaded enough to assemble an army and declare their intention to invade. (Of course, the Israelis could argue that they are already at war with Iran, a country that has launched many missiles at them and directed years of proxy attacks on their people and their military, which would be a far stronger case.) Most threats, instead, are a judgment call based on timing. What constitutes an imminent threat? The Israelis seem to have made the same judgment with respect to Iran that America made in Iraq: A regime that has expressed genocidal intent is trying to gain nuclear weapons; possession of nuclear weapons will mean, with absolute certainty, use of nuclear weapons; and therefore, waiting until the threat gels and becomes obvious is too dangerous. Such a calculation is not irrational, especially in the nuclear age, when armies no longer need to mobilize for nations to inflict ghastly damage on each other. To show infinite patience until a threat—especially a nuclear threat—becomes so obvious that the window for action shrinks to hours or minutes requires the coldest of cold blood. Few world leaders are willing to take such risks. 'We no longer live in a world,' President John F. Kennedy said presciently during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, 'where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.' But if the Israelis are setting the terms of the debate by claiming that they are embarking on a preemptive war—and not merely a preventative one—then they will have to make the case to the international community that the threat from the Iranian nuclear program required action now, without any further delay. Jerusalem may well be able to make this argument; if the Iranians were, as the Israelis claim, just a few weeks from assembling a small nuclear arsenal, and the ability to strike that capacity was receding from Israeli reach, then the argument for preemption is strong—especially because Iranian leaders have so often expressed their wish to wipe Israel from the map. But that rationale is complicated now by the sweep and breadth of the Israeli offensive. Several senior Iranian leaders, including from the Iranian General Staff, are reportedly dead, which suggests that Israel's goal might be decapitation of the Iranian regime, perhaps with the aim of regime change. If that is the case, then the Israelis should not box themselves in—as the Americans unwisely did in 2002—with shaky rationales about preemption. They should simply admit that they have reached a decision to end, once and for all, the existential threat to Israel from Iran. Iran's history and its unrelenting enmity to Israel could justify such a war. A decade ago, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the 'barbaric, wolflike' and 'infanticidal' Israeli regime has 'no cure but to be annihilated.' The Iranians cannot now complain if the Israelis are taking them seriously; the United States has launched military actions over far weaker threats to American security. But such decisions are laden with immense danger, especially because—as the great student of armed conflict, Carl von Clausewitz, warned long ago—there is no such thing as utter finality in war. The Israeli campaign may be necessary, but so far, it seems less like a preemptive action and more like something that another philosopher of war, Michael Corleone, would easily have recognized.
