JonS

The 'desire' (or belief) in the more clownish part of the electorate may have been true, but the "lack of commitment" in Europe was not.

Is there any /military/ point in sinking more ships? It looks good, and plays great, but this war isn't going to be won on the Black Sea, and the Russian fleet has already been neutralised. Maintain the threat for sure, but there doesn't seem much point expending any further resources there.

Yeah, the Geneva conventions (or, more relevant in this case, the Geneva protocol and tangentially the Hague conventions and the 1980 convention) are all about inter-state conflict. What happens intra-state, between you and your local law enforcement body, is entirely a matter for you and your respective legislature to figure out. 'Geneva' doesn't care a whit. (Multiple edits: bloody sbellçzech)

The dose makes the poison. Looking from the outside, there is absolutely zero equivalence between the two parties. None at all. There are ... odd individuals in both, but at the party level only one is utterly dysfunctional. Theres also this inconvenient reality: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes

Yeah, obviously I dunno either. Knackered wiring loom, maybe? Heat-damaged chassis member?

US design for maintainability is generally pretty excellent. It makes for expensive procurement and high maintenance budgets (ie, swap the entire Abrams power pack rather than fix the fault lòcally) but it does that in order to increase availability rates at the pointy end. Given that general approach, I'd be surprised if the Patriot was an exception. Given *that* I'd assume there is more internal damage that both can't be seen in a photo and can't be fixed in Ukraine. Or, alternately, the priority to date has been on pushing end-user equipment into Ukraine, and not on the support systems that keep them operational and in users hands. Edit: So what would be a simple field repair for a US unit has to go back to the States when its operated by Ukraine. But weighing against that second conclusion is the existence of USAREUR; if it was conceivably fixable forward at Grafenwohr or Kaiserlauten (or by any of the European operators of Patriot) then they would. That it wasn't suggests significant but non-obvious damage. I think.

Presumably this is only true at fairly high latitudes - north of 45°N or south of 45°S?

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

The one thing that the US is indisputably great at is logistics. I would say "days".

human autonomous, I suppose, but not machine autonomous. The point, and Tux noted, is that the purpose of autonomy is not to show off how l337 ur hax0rz are, but to preclude the need for comms which can be jammed, spoofed, and targetted.

You mean like a strike package? With some flying CAP, others on EW, some clearing the route in, a couple providing oversight and a comms rebro and BDA, some SEAD, and of course some bearing warheads and payloads? Yeah, of course. That all sounds clever and sensible, especially since it's already proven doctrinal approach to getting aerial effects delivery systems into an AO. It doesn't sound simple or cheap though.

Ok, there's a couple if things to unpack here. Firstly, if they're communicating then they aren't autonomous. Heretofore autonomy has been touted as the nirvana to avoid countermeasures, and therefore assumed as a feature. I'm not going to say the autonomists are right and the communicators are wrong, or vice versa. What I will say - again - is that drones will continue to be full of compromises, will not solve all problems, nor invalidate all existing capabilities. Secondly, "designing" is carrying a bit of weight. My beaver-tailed compadre just recently got a bit pissy about historical precedents because apparently we're only allowed to talk about *this* war, and yet here you are talking about the *next* war, or at least this war next year. More seriously: yes, you probably could improve both accuracy and precision that way (although you seem to be trying to avoid over-killing each targets by avoiding multiple drones attacking the same target, rather than reducing per-drone aiming errors?), but 'we could' is not the same as 'we are.'

Yes, but there is no feedback loop between one autonomous drone and the next, in the way that there is between subsequent rounds from a rifle.

Yes, but it's not like you can back that drone up and try again if the first hit wasn't where you wanted it.

Because I'm not a fan of magic thinking. Look, I have repeatedly said drones are great. But I *also* know they have drawbacks, limitations, and vulnerabilities. Pretending they don't, pretending they can do everything, isn't especially helpful.

It's not four VOG-15s?

Yeah, nah. I'm assuming accuracy as a given (I'm not sure precision is relevant here)

This feels like one of those "pick two" triangles. Range, size, payload. Pick the two you want to optimise carefully, because the other one is going to suck.

Could be useful for the last 10-20 metres, to cope with rapid final jinxing?

@The_Capt take it up with chrisl. I already halved the size of his 22kg drone and you're quibbling with *me*? Also, those cute little whirrwhirrs you keep referring to are *extremely* handy at the tactical edge as mobile mines and for battlefield assassination, but I believe (because physics) they lack the payload, range, and endurance to be much use as part of a fire plan supporting go-forward combined arms maneauvre.

Yeah, weird, right? Now, why would I do that? Oh, right, because Steve seems to think that micro drones are a useful proxy for large drones that can carry a reasonable HE payload. Small things pack small. Micro drones and small arms ammo are examples of this. Heavy things pack heavy. Artillery ammunition is the canonical example of this. Bulky things pack bulky. Load carrying drones are an example of this. Load carrying drones are a lot lighter than artillery ammunition, but they are also bulkier. Ignoring that doesnt make the arguments in favour of drones more compelling.

Ok, well, using that logic I will now simply demonstrate how you can pack a lot of artillery ammunition into a single truck https://images.app.goo.gl/hPN4JLEuvudZ8aTo7 Checkmate, as I believe the kids say.

Defensively; yes it is. Absolutely. Offensively; it seems to be a dead end street

Those arent 10kg drones with 2kg payloads, though, are they?

I take it that the truck in this example is basically the tardis? Ie, despite external appearances it has the internal volume to hold 200 drones plus the crews and equipment required to assemble, target, and launch them, as well as being invulnerable to all types of attack.