Intel Update - Nov. 14 - 5th Generation Happenings

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Underground. This is the intel update for November 8th through the 14th of 2026. The past 48 hours have been host to two happenings on the home front with cyber attacks, mysterious outages, and explosive threats coming to the homeland. In the Middle East, more indicators are stacking up to suggest a return to the war within the next couple of weeks as the setbacks from the midterms have briefly delayed the attack plans that were likely already decided on. In Europe, the latest round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been developing over the past week, and we will have to wait and see how those talks went. Spoiler alert, it doesn't look very hopeful for peace anytime soon. Due to the time-sensitive nature of what happened overnight, we will switch up the format a little bit and begin with the home front before getting into anything else. Starting off with the homeland, overnight, a major incident was reported at the BioEnergy Renewables ethanol plant in Peoria, Illinois. Yesterday afternoon, one improvised explosive device was discovered and placed at the ethanol plant, which authorities confirmed was a credible threat. The device was isolated, and mass evacuations were undertaken to clear the danger zone while EOD personnel examined the device. We do not know what type of device was found in place at this facility. On my maps here, I have projected it being a suitcase-sized IED, but the evacuation zone was much larger than that, so it's possible that authorities were factoring in the IED possibly causing some kind of chain reaction at the ethanol plant. Obviously, these are very flammable facilities, so the exclusion zone was pretty big. Most of the downtown area of Peoria was evacuated throughout the evening with a one-mile exclusion zone being put in place around the facility. After a few hours, the device was rendered safe, but as of this morning, the evacuation zone remained in place as the facility was searched for more explosives. During the night, several other reports surfaced on social media as well, which have been hard to verify. Details have been very hard to confirm due to the timing and scale of the incident itself. The main IED was discovered at approximately 2:00 PM local time and was not rendered safe until around 9:00 PM. The evacuation notices were only issued late in the evening, and since most people were asleep when the midnight press conferences were held, it was really hard to get the word out regarding the seriousness of the incident. Additionally, there may have been other IEDs discovered at this facility, as indicated by the responses to questions posed at these press conferences. Police Chief Brad Dixon was evasive and did not answer the question when directly asked if another device had been found. There were also claims of a drone swarm being sighted near the facility and also reports that bomb threats were called in to other locations around the city, such as, I think, the library, at the same time the IED at the ethanol plant was discovered. So far, all of these additional reports are hard to verify and must be taken with a grain of salt, as these reports could have been intended to flood the zone with fake information while a real crisis is ongoing. This is what we see in the modern fifth generation warfare battle space. This is kind of the way things go. Something happens, and then a bunch of fake reports come out at the same time trying to capitalize on the chaos. As of this morning, the entire ethanol plant is still being searched for hidden explosive devices, and the evacuation notice is expected to remain in place until this afternoon. More details are expected in due time as this is a developing situation, and we're really just waiting to see if any more confirmed IEDs are discovered at this facility. Before the IED threat came to light, a different crisis was underway around the nation as a large-scale disruption to aviation within the United States began last night. Shortly after 3:00 PM Eastern Time, aircraft in the Chicago area noted having problems with their radio systems. Immediately after those initial reports, radio outages had spread to New York, Boston, Washington, and eventually the rest of the nation. Air traffic control communication suites went down, and radar sites were taken completely offline as well. Due to the widespread nature of the crisis and the extremely serious nature of the incident, a national emergency was declared, and continuity of governance procedures were enacted to respond to the crisis. In the initial moments of the incident spreading throughout the country, several different narratives emerged to explain what was happening. Official spokesmen and various government officials stated that they did not think that the outages were caused by malign action but were instead the result of a bad software update that was pushed out by L3 Harris, which took systems offline. Various employees and some individuals within the aviation community have disputed this, stating that these claims are false and that this was really a cyber attack of some kind that took these systems offline and the government is trying to cover up the actual cause. More broadly, skepticism is very understandable due to the nature of the incident in the context of current geopolitical events that are ongoing around the world. This could have been some idiot pushing out a bad software update, or it could be a cyber attack intended to drag the US back into the war. Considering that the FAA was supposed to roll out a series of sweeping changes to air traffic control networks nationwide, to include the integration of AI into these systems, it's pretty coincidental for the entire system to come crashing down on the same day that the FAA was supposed to switch to a lot of new systems. Considering that the bulk of these press conferences have also involved a lot of marketing and urging of Congress to pass the budget and authorize the spending of $50 billion to fix aging infrastructure, it's hard to say what the truth actually is. At the moment, any theory is as good as the next. However, it would be wise to err on the side of caution with this incident. This crisis is a big deal, and even knowing how fragile our critical infrastructure is, it's hard to imagine a software update being pushed out that resulted in the largest ground stop in years. The last time a nationwide ground stop was enacted was due to a software issue back in 2023, and that delay lasted about 90 minutes or so. This ground stop lasted several hours, and the last time a nationwide ground stop lasted this long was 9/11. So that's a pretty big deal. Whatever caused the crisis will be heavily investigated, but in the short term, there's no real way for us to independently figure out what the truth is behind the outage. We'll just have to wait and see. Keeping with the theme of happenings taking place within the past few days, let's jump to Europe and discuss some of the developments across the pond this week. In the United Kingdom, bases housing American personnel and equipment in England have remained at a heightened security posture for reasons that are not explicitly clear. Two days ago, Royal Air Force, or RAF, Base Mildenhall, Lakenheath, and Feltwell were locked down, and the force protection condition was raised to Delta for at least one of these bases, indicating that an attack was imminent. For those that don't know, force protection level Delta or FEPCON Delta is a big deal. We almost never go to FEPCON Delta. This is the sort of grab your rifle and put your helmet on kind of, uh, terrorist threat level, so this is something-Something that is completely unheard of, especially in the Western world, unless there is an, a terror attack in progress, right? So locals posted videos online confirming that alert sirens were sounded on these bases, and later that night, officials stated that the reason for the alert was due to a drone incursion on at least one of the bases. Once again, the situation is developing, and we just don't have that many details at the moment. Separately, but sort of still involving these bases, uh, the alleged masterminds of the Fairford Airbase incident were indicted earlier this week, though the exact details of the indictments have cast even more doubt on the entire incident. Now that some time has passed and the picture is a little bit more clear, I think it's worthwhile to examine what we know so far and what probably happened in that case. So here's what I think happened. During the initial reaction to the original Fairford incident, a very specific line of speculation was proffered to explain the unusual reaction to the case. As a reminder, many details remain unknown following that September incident at Fairford, but some details of the case are crystal clear. None of the assailants approached the base gates, and no explosives were located within the vehicles. No ignition systems or detonators were discovered either. Absolutely none of the evidence as presented indicates that this was anything more than a fuel theft ring that a farmer discovered in the night, and initial statements by British authorities strongly indicate that this incident was not a terror attack. There is a lot of discrepancy between what British authorities are saying and what the Americans are saying. Officially, the United Kingdom is treating this as a terror attack, but everything that they've done so far in the law enforcement realm has basically indicated this is not a terror attack. And also, just to clarify the terminology, technically, if an IRGC-affiliated group were to attack a military base in the United Kingdom, this would not be classified as a terror attack. This would technically be classified as an asymmetric warfare attack because a military base is a valid military target, right? If the IRGC were to attack a civilian target, that would be terrorism. But if we stick to the textbook and use doctrinal terminology here, hitting a military base would technically not be terrorism. Still terrible, still something we don't want to see, but again, we forget that this conflict is not the GWOT. We're not in GWOT here. This is a state of armed conflict between nation states, so we kinda have to crack open some older textbooks to figure out what terminology to use here. But back in Fairford, at the time, we didn't really know what was going on, and it was possible that two separate incidents were joined together as one by mistake. I think it's possible that a genuine asymmetric warfare attack was expected quietly before the Fairford incident, and when a local farmer discovered a gang of common criminals, base personnel thought that this incident was the big one that they had been secretly expecting for some time and overreacted based on what they had been briefed on. Once it became apparent that the Fairford Five were actually just common criminals, authorities had to explain why they overreacted because the jig was up that they were expecting something more substantial. In the immediate aftermath, remarks by President Trump himself confirming that this was a terror cell that had been under observation for a, quote, "long time," this complicated the issue. President Trump was traveling at the time and probably didn't get a super great briefing on it, so his off-the-cuff remarks revealed a threat that he had been briefed on previously. It was an honest mistake, as this case is very nuanced, and it's really hard to describe in simple terms. So when pressed for a comment, President Trump made the connection in his head, not knowing that the Fairford incident wasn't the big one that he had been told about previously. At least, that's the theory that explains the heavy cover-up of the details of the Fairford incident and why the truth has been so hard to come by, with many details not adding up. This may or may not be what happened. We don't really know. This is, again, a lot of speculation here, but if we're trying to explain the unexplained, this might be a reason for why all of this has come about. Now that the whole saga has generated a lot of media frenzy, they had to find somebody to pin the, quote, unquote, "attack" on, even if there wasn't really an attack at all. Any real IRGC sleeper cells are not going to be stupid enough to try to conduct guerrilla warfare in such a slipshod manner as this. And when attention was focused on Fairford, any legitimate sleeper cell is probably going to go underground to not be caught. FBI leadership, in an effort to keep their jobs and prove that they are not retarded, had to find someone to blame for the attack that never was. And what better candidates than a man who had already been in prison for five months and two IRGC officials who never set foot in the United Kingdom? So just to organize this a little bit more, we've got a few things going on here. We have the original Fairford incident that was talked about ad nauseam a, a while ago back in September. During that initial incident, they arrested five guys, plus a couple of more in the, uh, couple of months since then. But the charges are very broad, and it's not really clear what was actually going on here, so that's that original case. Earlier this week, the FBI indicted three more guys, saying that these three individuals were the masterminds of the attack, and they helped plan it. However, those three guys that were indicted, one of them had already been in jail since May on other charges. He was actually the mastermind of the attacks, the firebombings of synagogues back in the UK, if you guys remember from back in the springtime of this year. There were a lot of those kind of attacks. Well, that guy was, uh, allegedly the mastermind of those attacks. He was caught and jailed back in May, and the other two guys that were indicted have not actually been arrested. They are actually still free, and they are IRGC officials back in Iran. So the United States tying a neat little bow around the Fairford incident saying, "We got our guy. We got the guys," uh, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense because the masterminds are a guy who was already in jail and two guys who are still not arrested. So this week's indictments are basically a whole lot of nothing, and they don't actually help us figure out, does the threat still remain? That's my best guess as to why the lockdowns and heightened security efforts are still in place. Going by the official statements, the official narrative here, they stopped the attack back in Fairford in September. They arrested the evildoers, and they have now indicted the masterminds, but the threat posture still remains, and we've now got American bases going to FEPCON Delta overnight. That doesn't happen for no reason. Very clearly, the United Kingdom is not playing along with the US either, as the Fairford Five, the original guys, are still on bail, and that one guy that was charged is kind of debatable, right? So they did charge, like I said, a couple of other people with very generic charges after a few weeks, which I'm guessing, just speculation here, I'm guessing they're, those charges are probably due to text messages found on their phones. After all, none of the people involved in this incident are particularly savory people. They're all very clearly up to no good in general, but as the US is primed and ready for a false flag attack to bring us back into the war, we have to be really, really specific about our analysis. The questions that remain are, is the Fairford incident that we all got spun up about back in September, was that a genuine attack plan? And if so, were the guys who were arrested the ones who were part of it? So far, the details are really sketchy all around, and every development so far has suggested that the details of the case as told by officials are either misleading or fabricated, which makes the truth difficult to discern. Until I have more information, I'm personally treating the Fairford incident as an attempt at a false flag. But I'm also keeping, this is the important part, I'm also keeping reservations about the potential for a real and genuine attack that might be on the horizon. Staying vigilant helps in any case, and that's the best that we can do. In a similar vein, moving to the Middle East, there have not been that many changes to the status quo, and we're still playing the waiting game as the White House figures out what to do. Major logistical efforts and military deployments continue to the region, and so far, there's not much of an indication that a decision has been made regarding what to do. As frustrating as it is for myself and all of you who have to sit here and listen to me say that the war is going to restart any day now for the past month, this is unfortunately how this administration carries out foreign policy. As the attack authorization rests squarely on one man, the decision matrix is more like a tidal chart, with feelings and sentiments ebbing and flowing in certain directions which vary by the day. One day, President Trump is trending toward war, and the next day he's trending away from the conflict as the various factions around him battle out the courses of action. Some people like this management style, other people hate it, but this is undeniably classically Trump. He changes his mind very unpredictably, and he often makes decisions based on who his last meeting of the day is with. If you are a lobbyist or an advisor who can get the last word in with the president, you have a pretty high chance that your recommended course of action is going to be chosen. This may not be unique to Trump. This may be just something that happens with all leadership positions, but it's still important to note. This battle has been fought in the White House this week among the different factions within the cabinet. The Rubio-Hegseth faction wants to return to war and strike Iran once again. The Vance faction wants to hold off on strikes and give diplomacy a chance, and the Miller faction wants to pivot away from the war, not because they don't support it, but in order to focus on domestic issues. Earlier this week, President Trump ordered Vice President Vance to abandon the diplomatic effort and pivot to working on those domestic issues. This is a major sign that this week President Trump's tidal decision-making process is ebbing toward either continued strikes or doing nothing for right now. However, military options are still on the table. The Teddy Roosevelt carrier strike group is moving to the region as we speak, and per the acting Secretary of the Navy, the plan right now is to have three aircraft carriers operating simultaneously in the Arabian Sea until next spring. Our service members overseas will not be coming home for Christmas this year. At least that's the plan right now. This is certainly not an indicator of peace being on the menu for the foreseeable future, and as it stands, the US Navy is at a heightened state of readiness and extending deployments to literally double the standard deployment length, going from six-month deployments to a full year at sea, just to remain perched on the edge of returning to combat at any moment. This week, President Trump seems keen to kick the can down the road some more, but as always, the enemy gets a vote. And boy, have the Iranians been busy this week. Within Iran on the ground this week, major preparations to fortify and insulate Iranian infrastructure from American targeting efforts have continued. Iran has openly been working with Russia and China, and Russian cargo flights into Tehran have been constant for the past month. Also, reporting came to light a few days ago suggesting that Iran might be secretly working with China to have a place to offload their smuggled crude oil to the international market. Similarly, the trade along the northern Iranian border has also increased as the Caspian Sea has offered the Iranians a backdoor to conducting cargo shipments directly with Russia. More militarily, substantial improvements have been made to Iranian missile defense systems throughout the war, though the exact developments that have been made are a mystery. There is some speculation that Russian forces might actually be directly manning SAM sites within Iran by now instead of just giving Iran the missiles and parts to make them work. This is impossible to verify independently at the moment, but this would be a good explanation of why the US might not be keen on carrying out attacks deeper into Iranian territory like we did at the beginning of the war. If Iran has a lot more capable missile defenses now, courtesy of the Russians and the Chinese, this might pump the brakes on some of the plans near the top of the list that's being considered. After all, the shoot-down of the F-15 earlier during the war and the grand fiasco that resulted in was quite a show that did not exactly make decision-makers any more comfortable with continuing strikes deep inside Iran. Within the Strait of Hormuz, the data has become so unreliable that it's hard to determine exactly what the truth is. Some of the biggest firms and sources for watching the waterway are no longer reliable and trustworthy in my opinion, and we are now moving into the winter season throughout the region, which means more pesky cloud cover. I do not have the budget to purchase five to $6,000 worth of synthetic aperture radar imagery every day to verify the claims that are being made by the multi-billion dollar corporations. So for my own work, I unfortunately have to be very comfortable with operating under a large blanket of uncertainty. How much oil is exiting the strait every day? I can't even begin to guess. It's certainly not zero. Uh, ships are indeed making it through in convoys just like always. However, as we have been observing for the past month or so, every single convoy gets struck, and every single morning we wake up to fresh videos and photos of smoke on the water after some random tanker got struck during the night. Unfortunately, that's pretty much where things stand right now regarding the war. Preparations are in place to continue the war, and the White House does not seem very likely to launch strikes for the next few days. But if something happens or a rapid decision is made, we can return to the war at the drop of a hat. Unlike the beginning of the war, when we could predict nearly down to the day when the war would begin, this time around, it's really a mystery because we are having to fight the war from a long way off, far out to sea. Until something happens, it's Groundhog Day every day, and we'll just have to wait and see how things work out. So that's all I have for today. I'm having to keep things short so as to monitor the situation here in the homeland just in case.Things get crazy over the next few days. The good news is that many of you are monitoring the situation as well, and during the national ground stop shenanigans last night, I saw that a lot of you were using the Ghost Net to exchange information during the crisis as a way of having some link to the outside world just in case the communications outages spread to other systems. This is exactly what the Ghost Net was intended for, to hear about a world event, turn on the radio, and be able to open up a line to an off-grid communications network that will survive an internet or cellular outage. So that was really great to see, and I appreciate all of you that have made this effort worthwhile over the years. A lot of great stuff is happening to increase our resiliency, and that is really good to see. Similarly, I've had pretty good success with the development of plugins for ATAC this week, and last night I pushed out an overhaul of the TFR Tac plugin, which now includes major airspace notices and nationwide ground stops. I figured that would be handy to have during the crisis as it developed, so I pushed it out while, uh, the ground stop was going on so that we can have it for later. The TFR Tac plugin will be updated again soon though, as I, uh, add in some more features, and it's probably gonna have a name change because it's going to do a lot more than just TFRs, so stay tuned for that. Otherwise, I will be pushing out major updates to the code base behind my, uh, six plugins now, I think it's six that are public, over the next few weeks, which is going to change a lot of how the plugins work under the hood. I need to do this because now TacX is public. It's Christmas time for Tac nerds because we've been, uh, waiting on this platform to come out for a while now. This is an improvement to WinTac, which is depreciated at this point. TacX is the new desktop application for Windows and Linux to run Tac on a desktop computer. So it's really nice to see that this platform has been released back to the taxpayers that funded it, and I'm working on converting as many plugins as possible to work with TacX if possible. It might not be feasible in all cases. I've already found a couple of bugs with TacX, so you know, we'll have to play this by ear, but I'm gonna give it a shot. So a lot of progress is being made, and I'm taking advantage of the lull in the fighting to get a lot of tools built that will help me in the long run, and as I build them, I'm publishing them for all of you as well. Some of these are going to be rolled into some bigger projects later on. I want to keep this as open source as possible. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that with some of these, due to, uh, preexisting licensing conditions with some other software I'm using, so we'll have to play it by ear on that. But I wanna make this as open as possible for everyone. Depending on the data hosting costs on my end, I may have to make some plugins paid later on. I will let you know which ones those are. I don't like doing that, but I may have to, uh, at some point, so we'll have to see. Right now, all the plugins I've got are free. They're gonna stay that way forever, and they're pretty simple to load in and use. So I wanna get these plugins out in the hands of people who need them as my way of doing my part to help the prepared citizenry. So that's all I have for today, everyone. Thanks for watching, and I really do appreciate all of your support, which has helped keep this project going. As always, my research notes can be found on my Obsidian page, and if you wanna check out my mapping data, all of that is available at the links below. As a reminder, my Ghost Maps plugin for ATAC allows everyone to quickly load in most of the KMZ files that you see here today, and I also have set up a few layers to be able to sort my data by date, so that if you want a cleaner look and not the whole database, that's now an option. So there are certainly plenty of options to choose from. So thanks again, everyone, for your support. I really do appreciate it, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.