Livdoc44

Hmmm we in the UK have personal experience of this and it has cost us dearly. A very expensive mistake...
I hope for the world's sake America takes note that tearing up years of work and cooperation doesn't magically solve anything and creates problems no one was told would happen...

It is potentially worse than that.  This sort of dysfunction does nothing but feed anti-democracy sentiment.  Democracies die due to abandonment, history demonstrates this quite well.  If the system is seen as "unworkable" democracies often choose suicide.  This is the threat to the US and global stability.  Trump and Greene are symptoms of something far deeper and dangerous....apathy that leads to despair.

From what I’m hearing, deal is done but passage is not. There could and are likely to be some bumps ahead. What has changed is that it has finally gotten through to everyone but the loons that disaster is being courted and not just for Ukraine. Keep those fingers crossed. 

I mean ... I think that's a joke? But with MT "Empty" Greene (proud veteran of the Bowling Green Massacre) it's really really hard to be sure. That is bat**** enough to have actually leaked out of her ears.
 
Edit: oh FFS. Those really were among the proposals she submitted 🥸

Drone wars - UKR FPV intercepts Russian recon drone similar to DJI Matrice-30
 

New update from General Oleksandr Syrskyi:
https://t.me/osirskiy/650
 
 

And just to give a sense of how early we are in this iteration of warfare, my great-great-grandfather witnessed the early use of proto machine guns at the Battle of Gaines Mill more than 150 years ago. Imagine where drones will be in 30. 

I read the doc and RUSI actually hits some pretty salient points.  The mainstream thinking is that unmanned systems as we are talking about here are an addition to conventional warfare.  An emerging capability to be added to our extant capability portfolios and expenditures. Unmanned systems are an undeniably part of the future warfare military algorithms and focus should be on how to combine them best within our current approaches to create advantages.
I think this does not go far enough.  I believe that unmanned autonomous systems will emerge as the core pillar of a future military operational system.  We will then build the remaining systems, some legacy others also new, around these new unmanned capabilities.  We will fund and equip the unmanned forces first, along with C4ISR and PGM strike.  We will then need to figure out from the money left what to resources with respect to heavier conventional manned systems.  This takes the entire approach to force development and generation and flips it. More plainly, tanks will survive if they can demonstrate that they can shape, support and/or exploit the main unmanned battle…not the other way around as RUSI and others suggest.
This era we are in reminds me of the introduction of machine guns. Militaries of the day immediately brigaded them like cannons and relegated them to a support-to-infantry role.  The reality is that within a few short years the role of infantry was to protect the machine guns while they exerted firepower effect, and then the infantry would exploit that effect by taking and holding ground…so they could move up the machine guns.

We're all arguing this on a board that's dedicated to a wargame that has implemented at least some level of autonomy at the small unit level for 20 years.  And made it work in reasonable compute times for battalion sized swarms on computers that were nothing special.  The only thing it doesn't have is the physical sensor inputs, and those are pretty straightforward.  And it was all implemented by Charles and maybe a helper (I haven't kept up).  Charles himself might even count as an autonomous biocomputer, since he's really just a brain in a jar.

When EU parliament is doing better than the House of Representatives, I hope Speaker Johnson looked at the eclipse without protection. What a ridiculous mind boggling genuinely bad look for the Republican Party, Congress and the U.S. At this point, a pure Ukraine bill should be able to pass. The fact it cannot, despite a majority of republicans, democrats, a bipartisan majority in Congress, alongside a majority of the American people, due to one man, the speaker, and I suppose, one presidential candidate, how can any ally of the U.S have faith in us? I mean, let’s be blunt, support for Ukraine is bipartisan and popular and not a fringe position. The fact that despite this, we are unable to pass the bill will not reassure any American allies, nor our enemies, nor neutrals to trust us.

But here and good news. After despearted interview of UKR Foreign Affairs minister about "Patriots", something moved in Eurpore
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68788110
Well the uckers were eventually going to get through...
I hope our friends in Ukraine are OK and at least summer is on the way...
Wind Turbines and Solar with extra Grid connections to Europe are I hope on the cards for you.

This sort of narrative reminds me of WW1 generals who also thought the airplane was a fad.  First off Russian glide bombs need to carry so much HE because they are inefficient and imprecise.  A whole lot of HE is not necessarily a good thing.  For example, if I have 10 enemy in a build I can use a large 500lb HE munition to drop the building.  The energy it takes to get that heavy munition to that building is significant, costly and has a high ISR signature.  If I have 10 micro-drones with a .45 cal round that will not miss, that simply fly into the building and kill all 10 enemy, I am using far less energy and cost to deliver the same effect.  I am using precision and processing as an offset.
So the Russian AF lobbing large glide bombs is not a sign that “big booms are back baby!”  It is a sign that 1) Russian ISR is still fairly low res, 2) Russia does not have a lot of higher tech precise munitions and 3) we should really be worrying about air denial for Ukraine because if that fails then a whole lot of this is largely academic.
As to “someday soon C-UAS will make this all go away and we can go back to Grandpa’s war” - there is a lot of hand waving on “someday C-UAS”.  Yes, counters will be developed but they will likely reshape the battle space in doing so.  For example, let’s say we invent a nifty micro-smart missile or laser that can blast those pesky UAS out of the sky, even when they are in swarms.  “Huzzah!  Now that is over with, let’s roll out the tanks and do this Persian Gulf style…USA.USA!”
Well except for the part where we have operationalized a technology that can find and hit a flying target the size of a bird with a very small munition at crazy scales.  What do we suppose the impact of that technology is going to have on conventional ground units?  That level of ISR alone means nothing can move without being picked up for kms.  Individual infantry are screwed, vehicles may as well be battleships.  The changes such technology would bring would be f#cking profound.
So there is no going back after this with or without UAS.  Unmanned, plus ISR, plus processing power, plus miniaturization, plus cheap production are all conspiring against our entire current theories of warfare. They have been for decades while we tried to ignore them.  So we can do “hope and denial” or we can can see the shift for what it is and adapt.
 
 

Turtle-tank %)

What ticks me off is that he is going to go off and sulk now, muttering about how we are all “high on copium” and “smother alternative views.”  I resent the echo chamber accusation immensely.  Many people have put in a lot of time and effort to keep up with this war.  We are definitely pro-Ukraine but we also try to avoid the blinders as best we can. If they do not want to get beat up, come in with stronger arguments…and maybe some actual facts.
Is Russia still in this thing?  Definitely.  I am not sure exactly how but it is undeniable that they are still holding and even capable of tactical advances.  However as many from this individual’s camp are prone to do, there is a double standard against Ukraine in just about all things. I am willing to bet Russia winds up taking about as much as Ukraine re-took last summer.  To them this is a clear sign “Russia can never be beaten!”  Meanwhile when Ukraine did it last summer, “see they will never push Russia out!”  It really doesn’t matter what happens the conclusions are always the same.
Ukraine is holding on just as well, if not better than Russia.  The UA is undergoing reforms.  The West is slowly getting its act together - this NATO collective mechanism for support is a good idea, if it doesn’t get weighed down in bureaucratic sludge.  Russia is not “getting better” by any stretch.  Advances come at horrendous costs.  Losses continue to stack.  They do appear to have some concerning glimmers of C4ISR daylight but they never really coalesce.  Ukraine continues to demonstrate significant strategic strike acumen.
As to the finish line…who knows?  Could Russia operationally collapse…sure, they have twice before.  Can the full on strategic collapse…definitely.  They did in 1917 and 1991, they can do it again.  Hell Priggy’s wild ride had real potential.  Will they?  Again, we do not know.  The second anyone from either side of this goes “this is how this war will end”, I for one, stop listening.  All we can do is hold on and hold fast.

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. 
 
Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. 
 
Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60
Dave

This is such a weird take to me as to be somewhat incomprehensible. Like, we seem to be operating in different factual universes. Italians bogged down in Albania? How is that an apt comparison?
What particular weapons systems are we depleting the reserves of? We've been culpably stingy with our second and third tier weapon systems. Your points contradicts one another. If China is learning to fight a western military that doesn't use any of its airforce, any of its modern deep strike capability, any of its naval capability, any of its modernized mech force... learn on, I guess?
On the contrary, everyone is learning that the shape of the battlefield has changed, and changed in ways that seriously favor the defender. The PLAN has to be looking at the videos of the SeaBaby double taps and thinking hard about what their losses crossing the Taiwan strait would look like.
Everybody is looking at the rise of low-energy precision fires and wondering how totally that's broken mechanized mass.
Everybody is looking at the totally illuminated battlefield and wondering how complete their ground-to-space ISR system is.

Helpful
 

But isn’t a “domestic” enemy someone whose position is forbidden?  There weren’t a lot of protections granted communists in the US back during the Cold War.  For example, if one was a firm communist they were not going to be employed within the defence department.  Roll forward to modern era, devoted fundamentalist Muslims did not fare much better.  This “freedom” concept really appears to be selective when viewed through a historic lens.  Sure, a US citizen can be free to express whatever they wish, but to do so without consequences from both private and public sectors has clearly been demonstrated as false.  Once a society allows for negative consequences as a result of free speech or association, it is no longer “free”.  This inconsistency appears migratory and frankly unfairly applied historically.  Try being a black civil rights movement in the 1930s in the South.  Not a whole lot of freedom of speech and association in that period for that demographic. LGBTQ in the 50s?
So what, as it relates to this war and situation?  Within the US, and other modern democracies, I do not think this is a case of “autocratic control” but you are very correct in calling it out as a slippery slope.  I think it is a case of “when does speech and association become a threat to national security?”  When is it honest political discourse in an open and fair democracy, and when does it become too dangerous to tolerate?  Obviously sharing information on how to build and deploy a WMD should not be covered in “freedom of speech”.  Nor should sharing of classified information.  But when does political discourse cross that line?
The US currently has elected officials who are pretty actively supporting a foreign powers agenda.  To the point that they are blocking military aid to an ally in the middle of an existential war.  At what point does this stop being “open and free political discourse” and become “paid foreign lies by a domestic enemy?”
I honestly do not know.  I have watched my country wrestle with this.  I think our “hate speech” laws are in fact dangerous.  But clearly there is a point, even within free democracies where we cannot tolerate free expression.  For this war, where that line is drawn could very well impact its outcome and what the region looks like. 

Free e-book: War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World (Project MUSE - War in Ukraine (jhu.edu))
Found this e-book which is a collection of essays on the invasion (it's from John Hopkins University, released under a Creative Commons licence). The contents and authors are:
The Ukraine War and Global Order => Hal Brands

1 Ukraine, Russia, China, and the World => Stephen Kotkin
2 Why Putin Invaded Ukraine => Michael McFaul and Robert Person
3 Strategic Fanaticism: Vladimir Putin and Ukraine => Lawrence Freedman
4 The Failure to Deter: US Policy toward Ukraine and Russia from the End of the Cold War until February 24, 2022 =>
Michael Kimmage
5 How the War Will End => Anne Applebaum
Part ii: The Conflict
6 The Russia-Ukraine War: Military Operations and Battlefield Dynamics => Michael Kofman
7 Russian Military Resilience and Adaptation: Implications for the War in Ukraine and Beyond => Dara Massicot
8 Planning for the Worst: The Russia-Ukraine “Tiger Team” => Alexander Bick
9 US Strategy in Ukraine => Kori Schake
10 Nuclear Lessons and Dilemmas from the War in Ukraine => Francis J. Gavin
11 Fallacies of Strategic Thinking in the Ukraine War  => Thomas G. Mahnken and Joshua Baker
Part iii: Global Dimensions and Implications
12 The Ukraine War and Global Cleavages => Ashley J. Tellis
13 Putin’s Point of No Return  => Andrea Kendall-Taylor
14 Accelerating Profound Changes Unseen in a Century: Chinese Assessments of and Responses to Russia’s Invasion 
of Ukraine  => Bonny Lin and Brian Hart
15 The European Union as a War Project: Five Pathways toward a Geopolitical Europe => Mark Leonard
16 Lose-Lose: The Economic Sanctions of the Russo-Ukrainian War => Daniel W. Drezner
17 America’s Global Role in the Shadow of the Ukraine Conflict => Peter D. Feaver and William Inbode
It's 300-odd pages long in total, but each chapter is it's own essay which should make it a little less daunting. Some distinguished names have contributed; Laurance Freedman, Anne Applebaum, Dara Massicot, Kofman.
I've only read the first few chapters but so far, so good.
 
 

This is the key point to take away from the rather tedious past couple days on this thread.
The challenging part is that propagandists can come up with reams and reams of verbose, officious-sounding nonsense much faster than anyone can challenge it. This was already the case before large language models made it trivial to create pages of vaguely reasonable-sounding claptrap at the push of a button. Now it is worse. And when those propagandists are also working for authoritarian states that exercise near-totalitarian controls over the media landscape within their borders, they are also able to capture plenty of real-life stories that support the views they want to shape, while suppressing the spread of content that does not.
Out here in the actually-free world, the propaganda coming from these authoritarian government mouthpieces seems laughably ineffective. How could anyone believe something that is such unabashed, unadulterated, full-blown propaganda? They're not even pretending it's otherwise! And yet, people believe it. "Free thinkers" with chips on their shoulders about their own government get bamboozled into believing that they are the ones living in an authoritarian state, actually. And then the "news" coming out of other authoritarian states can surely be no more fake than their own news, and, by the way, what is news other than propaganda, at the core? There are no facts, only interpretations, you see. This is why I don't mind you doubting. What is truth, anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?
It is depressing how many people fall into this hole.
This is not only why it is important to counter the Kremlin's lies, but also to consistently push back against the same kind of democracy-eroding rhetoric coming from media and political figures in parts of the world where there still is freedom of expression and freedom of association and so on. The people pushing it tend to either be useful idiots, or privileged enough (through age, wealth or power) to be insulated from the consequences. In both cases, not the best folks to be looking toward to inform your view of the world.

On victory and defeat - because it is the basis of so much “proof” on the opposing sides of this thing.  In warfare victory and defeat are very slippery concepts.  One can win a war by all metrics and wind up losing in the long run (see European Allies after WW1 and 2).  The vice versa is also possible (see Japan).  So whenever someone jumps in with the “Ukraine is obviously losing, Russia is winning” or vice versa, without clearly defining what that means, I get suspicious.
For now the best way to try and determine what victory/defeat means in this war, one needs to come to a common understanding of what the initial political and strategic goals of this war for each side were and were not.
When I am looking at the “winning/losing” equation I am using the following objectives.
For Ukraine:
- the survival of the state as independent and sovereign.
- the creation of a narrative of effective resolve and resistance that draws in international support.
- shape and set the conditions for enduring security integrity at wars end (this one is key to effective reconstruction and recovery).
For Russia:
- the complete political absorption control of Ukraine as a vassal state or sub-state.
- a clear demonstration of Russian power within its Near Abroad designed to push back on Western encroachment and reinforce the notion that other states within this region need to “stay in line”.  This one plays to both external and internal audiences.
- any and all erosion of NATO unity and resolve, as well as a draw back of US influence in the region.
For the West (we often forget we have a win/lose calculus here as well):
- A clear demonstration of the western rules based international order.  Russia must be forced to get back in line and face punitive measures for an illegal invasion that violates the rules we constructed.  To this end we support Ukraines objectives; however, we do not need all of them in full to achieve ours. We do need a clear demonstration of western unity and resolve as a foundational underpinning for that western rules based order.
- Any opportunities to expand western influence and control - see Sweden and Finland.
- the reduction of Russia as a security threat to Europe and globally.
- Avoid a catastrophic collapse of Russia at all costs as it would make the overall regional situation, and possibly global one much worse.
You will note that for me none of these are tied directly to lines on the ground.  I do not believe that where this war ends drive those strategic objectives (within reason of course - if Russia takes Kyiv the viability of Ukrainian state is greatly diminished).  
By my metrics, Russia has already pretty much “lost” this thing.  They can hold onto to what they have now but none of their strategic objectives are accomplished.  They end the war in worse position than when they started it.  Their only Hail Mary is that western support and attention dries up over time and they can exploit that to try and pull this one out of the dumpster.  The odds of full Russian control over Ukraine by this point are pretty damn low.  Much worse than at wars beginning.
Ukraine has two out of three, that last one of setting conditions for enduring security has not been accomplished. Ukraines long game is to enter into western economic and security mechanisms.  They definitely have earned that but we have the thorny issue of Russia still able to make trouble and project that into Ukraine.  We can live with a level of this a la South Korea, but I suspect we will need this thing to hold more water to work.
The West is doing well but we are not there yet, and things could still go bad quickly.  We definitely have shored up influence, control and unity. And we have managed to reduce Russian threats pretty significantly as the Russian military has been shattered. What we do not have are the conditions for long term stabilization. Russia is neither a zero-threat nor stable in the long term.
So to summarize…on victory/defeat so far:
Russia - nope.
Ukraine - OK, but not there yet.
West - meh, so long as we don’t blow the whole thing up.
I hope this is useful for the next time someone rolls through here with “well obviously Russia is winning” due to some headline about a tactical twitch somewhere.  They likely are not using the same metrics I do and in many cases have ulterior motives for painting this war in a certain light.

Supposedly russia broke their record with confirmed vehicle losses in a single day. 

Some stuff here today.  Interesting piece about RU payola to folks in EU to spread propaganda.  I've seen reports (let's call this rumor for now) that Mike Johnson is getting campaign funds from a lobbying group funded by an RU oligarch --  I don't know this will turn out to be true, we'll see.  When we saw Tucker C, Sen. Rand Paul, et al, spewing RU talking points verbatum (sp?), it does make one wonder.  And some RU stuff blowing up -- a lot of RU stuff.  I am shocked at how I can now laugh at men being killed.  Even completely untouched by this war I am becoming jaded.  I am glad these RU soldiers won't be able to cause more murder and mayhem, but I am still surprised at how callous I have become.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/31/2232580/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Russia-s-biggest-armored-assault-of-the-war-ends-in-bavovna?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
On another subject, I lit into SFHand in an earlier post.  Probably too much.  Working 60 hr week (literally) and I take a couple minutes to pop in to get some UKR news and I have to wade thru that nonsense.  Kinda made me testy.