LongLeftFlank

The problem with battleships guns is that they can only be fired from a battleship. They are sort the poster child for somethig that is going to be few, expensive, and too valuable to lose. Where you can dump cruisse missiles out submarines, and other PGMs out submarines that are much harder to kill, or cheap surface vessels that could be praticlly disposable. The unbelievably expensive radar, defensive lasers, and who knows what else a surface ship will need to actually be survivable can go on a platform dedicated to staying alive, and providing C4SIR to the miisslie barges..
Ranges for artillery and drones are just going to go up, and then up more. 
https://www.nammo.com/story/the-range-revolution/
100 km 155 is in late stage testing.
Perun covers current and near future drones here with his usual brilliance, was posted a few pages ago, but definitely worth your time if you haven't watched it yet.
What all of this adds up to is an ever expanding grey zone/no mans land in a more or less equal fight between first tier militaries, and probably vastly higher costs for a first tier power to take on a second, or third tier one. We are already at the point where both sides in Ukraine can barely bring a vehicles within 10km of the front, and they certainly can't stop moving in that  zone for more than a minute or two. Next year in Ukraine that could easily be twenty km instead of ten. In the next war, five or ten years from now it could easily be fifty.
 
U.S. is at the point of trying to get rid of towed guns completely. They can't shoot far enough, or scoot fast enough.
 

I think we have gotten far too comfortable with our “superiorities” over the last 30 years.  To the point they stopped being a factor and simply became basic assumptions. Cam-paint for example.  When I first joined up we were always wearing cam paint in the field because we trained to both hunt and be hunted. Then we got rid of cam paint and frankly I only just saw it for the first time in a long time in training ex pics in Latvia.
We assumed levels of superiority that are unstable.  We cannot always have air or firepower superiority.  If we believe that we always will, then why even bother with psychological operations? Or we box up psychological operations into “hearts and minds” soft and fuzzy stuff that does not jive very well with killing people. This essentially alienates psychological to a weird niche when before, as you note, it was all over the place.  I think it is on a long list of things we need to re-learn as we head into far more competitive warfare environs - right along with capacity and attrition.

Actual, actual....

FSRU Marshal Portovyy out of Kaliningrad (whose pipeline has not been cut off) offloads its cargo at sea to LNG tanker Cool Rover. Which ships the contraband gas to buyers who care less about its provenance than its price.
If [unnnamed Formites] want to act 'wised up' (woke?) about 'strategic global resources', perhaps focus on the stuff that actually moves the needle on balance of trade today.
That would (still) be stuff the belligerents can put in a pipe or a ship or a train and send where it gets the highest price.
Los!

As much as I would love this all to be true, due to the Western innovators' need to raise funds, the Chinese are now able to beat (and undercut) any newly commercialised Western product into mass production by stealing all the required IC under a guise of investor due diligence.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/owners-china-based-company-charged-conspiracy-send-trade-secrets-belonging-leading-us-based
And this is not the TU-144 'Concordski' or Yak-36 'Forget'er' we are talking about any longer. The 'knockoff' products of companies like Xiaomi (which I can get out here in Asia, as well as in Europe) are increasingly comparable to their Western originals in reliable functionality, if not always in service life.
Again, as much as I'd like for that not to be true, we must be realistic about this.....

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Actual, actual....

FSRU Marshal Portovyy out of Kaliningrad (whose pipeline has not been cut off) offloads its cargo at sea to LNG tanker Cool Rover. Which ships the contraband gas to buyers who care less about its provenance than its price.
If [unnnamed Formites] want to act 'wised up' (woke?) about 'strategic global resources', perhaps focus on the stuff that actually moves the needle on balance of trade today.
That would (still) be stuff the belligerents can put in a pipe or a ship or a train and send where it gets the highest price.
Los!

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

Yup, and these comments further point up that the key currency in this phase of warfare remains human flesh and blood ('soft ware').
...So short of intercepting, neutralising or 'decontrolling' the drones themselves, the critical path to me is to 'harden' those targets and staunch the bleeding by any means possible (and preferably at mass scale), whether it's decoys, camo, armour, fortification, physical distancing, whatever.

I take offence to the term "research".  I have reviewed your thread and clearly you had a conclusion and then set about picking information to support it.  This is not "research" it is "spinning" - I have failed staff college students for doing what you are proposing as "research", applying half the facts, largely out of context.
For example: "Russia already controls large swathes of Ukraine with valuable minerals..."  and linking this back to Chinese motivation to keep Russia in this war.  This is one enormous theory hanging on very little substance.  We have been through the "Ukrainian goldmine" theory before and it was categorically debunked.
Let's take Metals:
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/72-83_Metals
So before this war Ukraine was already selling Russia about $1B a year in metals and about 345M to China.  A quick scan says it looks like Ukraine was doing about $10B in metal globally.  
Meanwhile China is importing $144B a year in metals globally. Mostly from Indonesia, Congo and Japan:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/metals/reporter/chn?redirect=true  
China does not need Ukrainian metal, they already have global access an order of magnitude beyond the entirety of Ukraine production.
The we get into detail like Titanium.  Yes, Ukraine has got healthy Titanium reserves:
https://inventure.com.ua/en/analytics/articles/titanium-in-ukraine:-military-and-economic-context#:~:text=What are the reserves of,%2C rutile – 2.5 million tons.
About 8.4 million tons.  Wow, sounds like a big number and no doubt Russia and China want to get their greedy hands on it.  Whoops:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/titanium-reserves-country-10-biggest-155049656.html#:~:text=China is the largest producer,largest vanadium-titanium magnetite deposit.
China is the global leader in titanium production. Why on earth do they want more Titanium from Ukraine on the market?
Lithium? Yes. Ukraine has about 500k tons which are largely untapped. Wow that is a big number:
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/lithium-the-link-between-the-ukraine-war-and-the-clean-energy-transition/
Well unless one considers global Lithium reserves - Ukraine has about half as much as Canada:
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/mining-data-statistics-and-analysis/minerals-metals-facts/lithium-facts/24009
You will note that China is sitting on 2M tonnes.
And then there is the thorny issue of where that lithium is located in Ukraine:

https://www.renewablematter.eu/articles/article/ukraine-all-lithium-reserves-and-mineral-resources-in-war-zones
This is where these wingnut theories really break down.  Russia was already occupying a couple of these deposits in Donetsk.  Lets be generous and say they took enough to grab 4 new deposits.  Woo-hoo.  Now a few thorny questions:  what shape is the infrastructure in these areas look like right now?  How much is it going to cost Russia to get these sites up and running?  How much actual money are they going to make from this sweet lithium?  When can they expect to see any money?  And finally, the big one, how much does all that compare to the costs of sustaining this war?  Last count the war in Ukraine was costing Russia between .5-1 B$ per day. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=In November 2022 it was,%24500 million to %241 billion.)
So your theory here is that China is going to spend effort, money and diplomatic points to secure access to lithium, which they do not need and is costing Russia likely far more than it is worth at this point?  In fact the same could be said for just about all Ukrainian metals.
Comparing modern day China to Nazi-Germany is just plain dumb.  Maybe pre-WW1 Germany - ignoring socialist ideologies and about four thousand years of history and culture.  The idea that China somehow masterminded this whole thing (with zero proof, I might add) is laughable.  China is stuck on the other side of this mess and is trying to deal with it on their end. They are going to pursue and promote their interests, just like we are.
Russia and Putin are throwing up all over themselves in some weird attempt to rebuild an Imperial Russia...and are failing brutally.  Sure, Russia could "hold on" until we see some sort of Armistice.  They will have gained a grand total of an additional 6-7% of Ukraine from what they controlled on 21 Feb 22.  It only cost them around 500k men, most of their modern military equipment and diplomatic/geographic isolation that may last several decades....brilliant. 

Soldiers would be the top of the list. I can see an argument that they have less available than they had.
Maybe better trained less soldiers are enough with better drones.
I guess we will find out this year...
Ammo is another concern but that again is potentially fixed but not ideal so worse than last year.
I think that Ukraine will hold, but compared to the optimism we had last year we could say they are in a slightly worse position? 

(source: The trained agent controlled an off-the-shelf Robotis OP3 humanoid robot, which costs around $14,000)
(Robots are 20" tall. Some assembly required. Batteries not included)

Interesting episode of repelling of Russian armored attack on Terny on 2nd of April. I posted this video and you may pay attantion on the tank with pile of boxes on the turret. As became knowingly this was Tsar-EW-tank, inteded to supress all possible frequencies of UKR FPVs.
 

Next the story about this:
It's Russian armored column has came. Our FPVs were falling down like flies on all frequencies, because on leading tank the EW-monster drove. Mad Max is relaxing here. On the pallet Russians assembled monsterous construction from everything equipment that they had. Three panels of patch-antennas 800/900/2.4/5.8 around and to all this were added blocks on 700-1000 ranges. Upper on some planks and around. All this was tied with ropes. On the armor also was mounted generator and batteries. There was too hard for our pilots, but quess if it kept EW the tank? No. Our brave pilots from the row of units hit them. Further with other armor became much easier.

 
And describing of the same episode from DeepState.
Before the column moved at 14:00, Russian TOS-1A has driven forward for preliminary bombarding of our positions, but was timely spotted and hit. 
At 16:00 we spotted th ecolumn of 6 tanks, coming from Zhytlivka direction. It's interesting that Tsar-EW tank moved in the head of column. It was destroyed later, you can see photos in Flash's TG. This Frankenstain was destroyed by the drone of 60th mech.brigade with additional homing (meant "machine eye"?). Two more tanks were hit by FPVs of 63rd mech.brigade. 
The moment of Tsar-EW was hit bt drone
In parallel way, the movement of column turned out in shooting range. 12th NGU regiment "Azov", 95th air-assault brigade, 21st mech.brigade, 60th mech.brigade, 63rd mech.brigade started to heap on Russians with everything what was possible. As result from 6 armors only 1 could flee. 
Since some time katsap box arrived to embark scattered infantrym bvut was destroyed too. 
Next day, 3rd of April next TOS-1A came forward, but again was destroyed by "Azov"
On 4th of April one more tank was destroyed here. 
 
 

It's a form of greeting the spring for them. Russian soldiers leave their holes they lived all winter and simply cannot resists sending several own mechanized battalions into flames during these futile attacks. Some unconcious form of celebrating life rising everywhere around them probably. We have Eggs and Easter bunnies, they have crispy  tanks. I didn't read him lately, but I am sure Dugin has entire theory already of suicide attacks as expression of uniquely Russian unharnessed elaine vital.
Check mate, cold-hearted Anglo-Saxons. You will never get it.

Our "far-right" not fixated on WWII legacy unless it concerns exactly hystorical aspects or memorial days. Our "far-right" more interesting with "ukrainocentrism", strengthening of our culture and language positions inside the country as a counter to Russian mass-culture influence, struggling with negative globalisation and left woke ideology aspects, wich some world institutes try to anchor in Ukraine (especially inside univercities), fighting against corruption and oligarchs power, they always voted for "clever militarization" of Ukrianian society (having Russia as a neighbour), for upbringing of young generation in national spirit, sport, scouting etc, so they will grow responsibile active citizens of own country, not amorhous consumers. Of course, for some people to be an active patriot of own country and to be ready to protect own lifestyle with a force this is "extremism" %) 
PS. Russian RDK are mosly "far-right" too. Just not all far-rights are "equally useful" )))