JonS

PM me your email - I'll send your beaver tail some more recent images to dream about. (Edit: fun fact - TRHPS was written by a kiwi dairy farmer. I'm not sure what that says about the farming community, or the wider country, but I'm going to assume "something disturbing." Very fun movie though )

You do realise we're arguing the same side here? A lot of traditional systems seem broken (or wounded, or at least a bit lame due to a gammy knee) right now; navy, fast air, attack aviation, infantry, armour, engineers, logistics, and yes artillery. That's due to a bunch of things; prolific atgms, prolific pgms, lagging mil industrial capability and production, prolific isr, and yes drones. The way through this dark wood isn't going to be ditching everything and betting the farm on the whirrwhirr. We *know* that artillery is an important part of the combined arms team. We *know* that artillery is crucial to enabling go-forward offensive maneauvre. It isnt working right now, but as always it'll evolve and indirect fires will resume their place in the go-forward team.

WWI? WWII? Korea? Falklands? GWI?

Quite a bit. I havent yet seen a lot of evidence of drones being used offensively as part of go-forward combined arms maneauvre. Instead we see they're being used as mobile mines or battlefield assassination tools. Which is genuinely really problematic, but also kind of a dead end street. Edit: I'm excluding ISR above. That's already generally integrated and supplementing other systems

Drones are part of a system - the whirrwhirr flying thing is just the end point of that system. The system can be attacked anywhere along its chain, and different points in the chain will need different combinations of things to effect an attack. At the moment everyone seems exclusively focussed on knocking down the whirrwhirr. Thats part of it, but so is camouflage, dispersion, armouring up, supply chains, intelligence in its myriad forms, attacking the operators, disrupting comms, deception, etc.

Time. I can be suppressing that tree line 4 minutes from now and start supported arms moving 4 minutes after that, or keep it up for the rest of the day. Achieving either with drones is, ok, lol. This is the same argument as "you don't need to knock out a tank, you just need to knock out the truck that brings it fuel." And it's true; you don't, although it only solves the problem tomorrow rather than right-now-because-omg-the-tank-is-breathing-down-my-neck. But still. It's true. And you know what else the argument works on?

and what can be relied on to deliver that cubic mile of popcorn? Oh. Right. Artillery ... because drones will definitely not be getting that job done.

Artillery can can fire from dispersed positions. C2 is a lot easier (a LOT easier) when all the guns are within shouting distance of each other, but there is no technical reason they can't be dispersed from each other by 100s or 1000s of metres. Uh, the development of artillery during WWI totally DID ruin the trenches as systems. The offence/defence arms race during WWI was run at a sprint (at least in terms of ability to break-in. Break-through and break-out remained elusive)

Not exactly - the steel alloy used (high carbon and brittle) is chosen so as to create fragments which themselves contribute to the effectiveness of the weapon. Artillery worked quite well before drones were a thing Look, drones are great. The have capabilities that emulate or exceed other similar kinds of effects delivery systems. But drones also have limitations, and capabilites that are inferior to other similar kinds of effects delivery systems. And they most definitely aren't some magical uber weapon which has suddenly made all other military capabilities obsolete.

The gun is just the delivery system. The ammo is the weapon, and the weapon lends itself to mass production is a significant way. Artillery ammunition is practically the poster child for mass production. Artillery ammo is pretty logistically heavy, but then mass scale UAVs are going to be INCREDIBLY logistically bulky. The supply chain isn't particularly delicate or particularly long - at least no more so than any other military log chain. Ah ... artillery does chose its own targets and is given a free hand to smash ****. It's a combat support function, true, which means that it works in support of the maneauvre arms (at least ... most of the time. Sometimes it's totally off doing its own thing), but that support is - doctrinally - provided in terms of desired effects. Supported arms commander will say "I want to move from here to there, what can you do for me shelldrake?" The attached FO will say "Ok, I'm going to drop a concentration of HE on that feature where I suspect there is an enemy OP just as you start to move, then drip more rounds over the next 10 minutes - is that enough time to cross the gap?" OR the FO will say "Ok I'm going to drop a smoke screen between you and that village where I suspect there are enemy forces - it'll take 2 minutes for the screen to build up, and I can sustain it for 15 minutes - is that enough time for your move?" OR the FO will say "Ok, I'm going to pop some illum rounds just in front of that treeline where I suspect there are enemy ATGM teams, that'll blind their Gen1 night vision gear so you can move freely. I have enough illum for 14 minutes - is that enough time for your move?" Three different ways of solving the same problem, FOs choice. And, by the same token, drones aren't just the wild west off on their own gig and ignoring the larger battle. At least, they better bloody not be. They should be targeting enemy assets and applying effects in support of the wider battle. At least, they bloody well should be, otherwise they're just wasting everybodies time. Two things here. 1) about the same as a drone if you're using PGMs. 2) You're introducing additional factors ($ now, what next?) to ensure that your pre-determined conclusion remains valid.

Artillery fits all four, and handles the 50% haircut.

Well, flip that around - at what point would you prefer a global nuclear conflagration than the alternative? My partner grew up in part of Soviet Russia which now is not part of Russia. Being part of Russia sucked, absolutely (her father, for a small example, came within a whisker of being 'volunteered' for heroic cleanup duty at Chernobyl), but that's in the rear view mirror now. It wouldn't be though if WWIII had broken out.

Cheap-thing-takes-out-expensive-thing is not exactly a fresh hot take. Kipling was writing about that well over a hundred years ago. https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_arith.htm

That reminds me of the carrier landing scene from 'Hot Shots!'

Jeepers, Thanksgiving at your place must be thoroughly unpleasant then.

Asymmetric economic warfare? Cheap missiles shot down by expensive interceptors = win. Any actual damage on the ground is a bonus?

Oh gawd. 20+ years later, and we're back to MIHOP and LIHOP.

It could be technically true but wholly irrelevant. As in, "the terrs turned left out the back door and headed south down Stalinski Prospekt towards Ukraine!" Which, technically, yes, Ukraine is to the south of Moscow. 800-odd kms away. As long as they make no other turns. By the same logic, if they,d have gone straight ahead they would be "heading for England!", back the other way would be "headed for Japan!", or a right turn would mean "headed for Finland!"

There were other issues too https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/

Despite your effort to boil the ocean here I think we are in pointed agreement once again, albeit coming at it from different directions. If I read you correctly, you're saying that trying graft a western style military onto Afghanistan didn't work because their government wasn't compatible with that style of military. I agree with that, and if I'm understanding him correctly, so does @Kinophile. That is actually his main point, despite your effort to disagree with it. Anyhoo, I agree. However, in Afghanistan's case I think the original sin was trying to trying to give them a military that looked like some weird amalgam^ of western expeditionary-ish doctrines that was never going to work in their context. The Afghan people can obviously fight, really well and really effectively, when they fight in ways that suit them. In other words, like you, I think there was a mismatch between the civil/political milieu and the indigenous military forces in Afghanistan, but unlike you I think that effort should have gone into creating a military that fit that milieu, rather than trying to impose or import a political ideology that would have been able to support "our" way of fighting. Hopefully the relevance to Ukraine is obvious. And I think on that we definitely agree. ^ given the number and variety of different training teams from different nations they weren't even trying to adopt a single doctrine. Instead they had to try and make sense of all the doctrines at once.

Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously. If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function. Is that about right? Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)

Kinda weird that someone "just happened" to be videoing that particular plane, just at the moment the engine fell off, just before it flew behind obscuring terrain?

Wikipedia suggests the Trent has the big number - 4 or 5 - about right. But whether it's 4 or 5 or 6 doesn't matter in some sense, since any of those numbers aren't enough to continuously cover two areas simultaneously. OTOH, if it's still 5 or 6 then the Rooskis do still have some redundancy (assuming they leave monitoring the rest of their border to purely ground-based radar) before gaps will start appearing in the coverage over eastern Ukraine.

I mean ... war is basically a political discussion using pointy sticks, so, yes?

Well, much better that than the money /actually/ going to the Russian armed forces As an aside - that shell looks sketchy as sh!t. Edit: as a second aside, this really isn't a specifically Russian behaviour. You see exactly the same thing after every natural disaster, and I doubt you'd have to do much scratching to find the same scam being worked supposedly for the Ukrainians. Basically: people suck. Really. Just the worst.