kluge

In theory, this should be pretty easy as image classification is well known and widely studied. Acquiring the data is a different story. Free data sources like FIRMS don't provide enough resolution to identify individual positions in any meaningful way. Commercial data sources have enough spatial resolution to identify vehicles, but generally don't have the temporal resolution to continually scan locations and doing so every hour is sure to rack up an eye popping bill. Government satellites definitely have the resolution, but that information is classified and its unclear if the US offers a direct data pipeline to Ukraine.

One word:" capacitors. The power requirements are much more manageable if the laser is powered by a capacitor bank, which is to say that the laser is charged up between shots. Not enough power? Just charge the capacitors a bit longer. Bullets deliver more energy per shot, but are harder to aim because the tracking has to take bullet flight time into account. Lasers are much more likely to land on target.

Incidentally, the location on the left bank of the Dniper where this vehicle was blown up... ...is the exact same spot where Ukrainian forces were reportedly spotted recently. At a minimum, this looks like a successful recon action that managed to traverse ~2km of marshland between the river bank and previously held Russian positions. Probably not much more than that for now, but it's certainly notable that this occurred along the route of one of the three bridges that previously traversed the river. One might think that would be an exceptionally well defended spot, but that does not appear to be the case.

Water is incompressible. The force from an underwater explosion is transferred more or less directly through water with minimal loss of energy. As such, a near miss underwater produces nearly the same effect as a direct hit. A small surface drone with a similar sized payload does less damage because a portion of the energy from the explosion is transmitted through the air, which cushions the blast by virtue of its compressibility. Thus, the best place to hit a ship is below the waterline, where there is no air. Additionally an underwater explosion will generate a bubble as it pushes water outwards. The bubble eventually collapses, and as it does so the water that takes up the space no longer supports the ship. In certain scenarios where a ship is heavy enough and there is a large enough bubble, the ship will bend as the bubble collapses. This is referred to as "breaking the back" of a ship. The impact of this is somewhat mythologized and often gets blown out of proportion, but is nonetheless noteworthy because at the end of the day it's extra stress on a ship that wouldn't be produced with an above water explosion.

Today's ISW report leads off with an explanation:

Kos's first conclusion from that video is "Ukraine still can't do combined arms"? Since when did he attend staff college? Regarding leaf cover, there won't be much of a change because most of the treelines at the frontline are already deforested. The leaf cover is gone and the trees are effectively dead. Rear areas are a different story as there's still coverage there. Artillery and ammo dumps will be much more exposed. Who that favors is anyone's guess as the counterbattery duel is largely invisible to the public. 1-2 extra hours of darkness is at most a minor tactical advantage. I doubt there will be a significant increase in nighttime tempo over what is already happening now. UKRs plan is pretty clear- they have the initiative and want to retain it through the winter.

A bit older, the "battle of the T" series came with a fairly useful AAR video: (I can't get the original to load for some reason but it's reposted in a few locations). Commander used the drone to direct the risky tank maneuver.

It is deterrence but it is also proliferation. The moment the world figures out that a small island government (an unrecognized one, no less!) is credibly deterring an invasion via the acquisition of weapon capable of causing mass destruction, there will be no shortage of nations lining up to do the same within a couple of years time. Sidenote: If history is any indicator, the dam is hardly a major point of failure. It was, after all, built on a floodplain prone to catastrophic flooding. A new flood would certainly be destructive but its not like the previous ones wiped the cities off the map. Regardless, deterrence can be achieved without the need for extra big badda boom explosions. I hear there's a scrappy country currently getting the upper hand on a modern navy while zipping around on the likes of rubber rafts and jet skis....

Today's ISW report starts off by mentioning a set of fortifications just south of Robotyne that reportedly has changed hands multiple times over the previous few weeks. Here's a thread that maps out the trenches in great detail with high res imagery. One particular bit that caught my notice is the report that the Russians have dug a proper subterranean tunnel to the next town and are using it to send in reinforcements.

Search https://archive.is/ for https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-jet-ski-raid-crimea-russians-dead-9h2gzckpj and that should do the trick

Looks like it. It was sent to the Senate before the stopgap bill today, but the Senate opted to handle the stopgap bill first. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2023/10/01/congress-avoids-government-shutdown-drops-ukraine-aid/ Looks like

The breach of the main defensive line and subsequent battles have mostly all been located in a narrow, shallow valley. The geography limits the exposure of Ukranian forces at the bottom of the valley to direct fire and observation. Conveniently there's also a well built set of fortifications that provides excellent cover for infantry. I suspect that Ukraine is able to freely operate drones in that area because the valley provides a degree of protection from jamming, so long as the drones fly low enough (< 50-100 ft) such that they are out of the LOS of various EW systems. An EW system covering that valley would need to be within 1km of Ukranian positions and wouldn't last terribly long.

Hate to break it to you, but I feel obligated to point out that lasers are literally a form of radiation emission and as such they are most definitely vulnerable to various forms of EW.

The destroyed submarine is now ~2.5k tons of scrap metal taking up space in the dry dock. Not exactly trivial to clear out, and so long as it sits there, the dry dock is unusable. Ukraine is presenting Russia with a dilemma: either Russia can keep operating out of barely functional facilities in Sevastopol and face further destruction, or it can move its fleet farther away from Ukraine but in doing reduce its control over Ukraine's trade routes.

No. A world war is a conflict that directly involves most if not all of the world's major powers. Which is a separate concept from two nations at war with one another in multiple locations across the world.