chrisl

Plus the aliens have to travel really, really, really far, so it's a major pain to bring a lot of mass.
There was a paper in PNAS (open sources, so anybody can read it) a couple years ago that estimated that the total mass of coronavirus at the time (around peak pandemic) was less than 10 kg. That's not a typo. Ten.  And that was an upper limit. 10 kg of virus particles on the whole planet, distributed among all the people on earth, caused a huge disruption to human society.  And the aliens wouldn't even have to deliver 10 kg - the vast majority of those 10 kg are virus particles that people manufactured themselves from the instructions provided by their infections.
I've been advocating for a while that all these people with the idea that we'll send people to other stars is silly.  It's more effective to send E coli, or a mixture of various bacteria that can survive a range of conditions.  Eventually they'll evolve into something that's customized to wherever it lands, and if it evolves enough to be able to read, you make sure there were a bunch of indestructible "books" (information storage devices) sent along with it so they don't have to reinvent physics and chemistry.

You either need very accurate pointing (i.e. sensing) so you can hit it in a single burst, or you have to haul around an enormous mass of ammunition.  And you need very fast bullets if the thing is zig-zagging unless you're at very close range.
Anti-drone-drones are among the best solutions, but they need a bunch of work so that you aren't killing your own drones with the drone-killier-drones.
(drone drone drone, he droned on...)

The kind of thing you'd see in a US made eastern European road-trip comedy of the 80s.
Parody is dead.

The kind of thing you'd see in a US made eastern European road-trip comedy of the 80s.
Parody is dead.

The kind of thing you'd see in a US made eastern European road-trip comedy of the 80s.
Parody is dead.

Precision munitions aren't even that useful without precision ISR.  Without the ISR you might get nice bombardment patterns, but no guarantee you're hitting anything useful.  With the precision ISR you can much more effectively use less precise artillery (and other stuff) as long as you account for the limits of your equipment.

Precision munitions aren't even that useful without precision ISR.  Without the ISR you might get nice bombardment patterns, but no guarantee you're hitting anything useful.  With the precision ISR you can much more effectively use less precise artillery (and other stuff) as long as you account for the limits of your equipment.

This is a variation of the mass vs precision thing.
In the paper-scissors-rock of modern warfare, precision artillery beats mass artillery, as we have already repeatedly seen proven over the past 20+ months.
Tl;dr: I'd much rather have/be supported by a Western artillery system with fewer shells than a Russian system with more shells.

Reading that inspired me to think of an alternative.
Giant rolling drum full of water with rockets on the ends oriented to make it spin on its own and roll a path through the minefield.  Dump a bunch of them off the back of a dumptruck, like depth charges from a rack, and let them roll a bunch of paths.
It could also be powered from an internal motor, but it wouldn't be as dramatic and would cost more.

Needs a better aspect ratio.  And maybe some blockchain...

Needs a bit of Bondo first.

Needs a bit of Bondo first.

The Abrams would have each needed to come towing a train of MICLICs to deal with the minefields.  Otherwise it would have just been a bunch of detracked Abrams getting towed back alongside the Bradleys.
The small, low flying helicopters noted a few posts back might arguably be more effective than tanks for a mechanized attack. They sort of approximate landspeeders in being able to move rapidly over any terrain without being close enough to the ground to set of magnetic or pressure sensitive AT mines.

Not sure it would have made a decisive difference.  It isn’t the weight of armour, it is being able to breach high density minefields 500m across while under the eyes of UAS, ATGM, tac aviation and artillery.  Even as beat up as the RA is it is a pretty low bar to detect, hit and kill the lead breaching vehicles with the levels of ISR on display.
Maybe the UA could have tried more breach lanes but I just don’t see how they could get through all three belts with more tanks when the lead ones get taken out.  Once those minefields were in place it raised the difficulty of offensive operations for the UA dramatically.  Further is requires conditions that they are unable to create - it may require conditions no modern military can create at the moment.
I am loathe to give the RA credit but Bakhmut may have been largely diversionary to allow for the creation of all these minefields.  It pulled a lot of UA attention away to deal with while the RA built the defensive belts.  It was one helluva expensive diversionary operation but it may have succeeded in that the UA summer-fall offensive was blunted.  The only counter-point to this is the fact that the RA had not a very great track record of operational synchronization prior to this.

Like the various US/NATO high altitude drones with ~12+ hour dwell times and long range that can be controlled from Florida while they fly anywhere in the world?  And are armed with guided missiles?  They're not quite disposable-cheap at current prices, but many (if not most) of the tech needed to enable them has come down in cost since they were developed and could be a lot cheaper if produced in large quantities.  You'd probably want to have the driver a little closer to the theater, and maybe have a high altitude relay instead of space relay for latency, but it's very doable.
 
Eliminate most of the Russian vessels from the Black Sea and there's not a lot of point to them holding Crimea, other than national pride.  
 
 

And much of those $76B are dollars that were spent in previous years to build equipment that was sent and won't be directly replaced by new production of the same or similar equipment.  That's some value that's being carried on the books for that equipment, and most of it won't be replaced by new orders. Most of it will likely be replaced on a schedule similar to when it would have been replaced by new designs/technologies anyway.  The artillery shells and recent model rockets of various sources are the things most likely to be replaced by new spending.

I'm thinking that the biggest thing holding the UA back is a lack of guns and ammo. We've seen that the killers in this war is the combination of ISR and indirect fire. The UA doesn't have near enough systems or ammo to cover the entire front at once, more less to dominate anything other than a small operational area for a short period of time. Looking at the southern front this summer that seemed to be the MO, but the constraint was limited support. 
So I agree, it probably doesn't matter how many tanks are sent, but the number of tubes and shells can make a meaningful difference. I think the tanks and IFVs are still helpful for the final attack and support to clear the objective of whatever is left after a good pummeling, but without solving for air superiority (below and above 2000 feet) it would probably be suicide to do an actual breakout. So it is down to eating the elephant, one bite at a time. If the UA had enough support that process could be sped up and expanded to the point where they could do it faster, but it is all about controlling an operational area with ISR and fires. The assault element is now pretty much relegated to clean up.
As for attacking with conventional mass, it looks to me like all that is left is speed. Surprise is pretty much gone. Armor able to stop anything above shrapnel and small arms appears to be unnecessary (anything sitting still or moving slow within arty range or atgm range is killable). So if you do want to attack in the conventional combined arms mode you are going to have to do so at speed and with the mentality that you are going to lose a lot to take anything. It is the only way I can see mass being successful and from the videos of the RA attacks they might as well "Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead" as the choice is to die slow or die fast, but at least you might get the chance to get on top of the defender if you go fast.
Or the good ole RA model of having enough mass to overwhelm, like Bagration style mass. Where there is so much going on that the defender can't address everything and multiple breaks occur leading to collapse. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a bloody awful mess, just that it might be the only way for mass to be viable is a metric shat ton of it all over at once. Or it would be the Somme, hard to tell at this point.

And much of those $76B are dollars that were spent in previous years to build equipment that was sent and won't be directly replaced by new production of the same or similar equipment.  That's some value that's being carried on the books for that equipment, and most of it won't be replaced by new orders. Most of it will likely be replaced on a schedule similar to when it would have been replaced by new designs/technologies anyway.  The artillery shells and recent model rockets of various sources are the things most likely to be replaced by new spending.

And much of those $76B are dollars that were spent in previous years to build equipment that was sent and won't be directly replaced by new production of the same or similar equipment.  That's some value that's being carried on the books for that equipment, and most of it won't be replaced by new orders. Most of it will likely be replaced on a schedule similar to when it would have been replaced by new designs/technologies anyway.  The artillery shells and recent model rockets of various sources are the things most likely to be replaced by new spending.

And much of those $76B are dollars that were spent in previous years to build equipment that was sent and won't be directly replaced by new production of the same or similar equipment.  That's some value that's being carried on the books for that equipment, and most of it won't be replaced by new orders. Most of it will likely be replaced on a schedule similar to when it would have been replaced by new designs/technologies anyway.  The artillery shells and recent model rockets of various sources are the things most likely to be replaced by new spending.

For folks freakin out about the expenditure from the west, it might be good to have perspective,
In Afghanistan the US alone spent some 2 TRILLION dollars.  The gov't sitting in Kabul right now is the umm err Taliban.  As of July we had spent about 76 billion in Ukraine.....  For the return on investment, it is hard to say the West hasn't got a financial windfall in kneecapping the Russian military.

And if you've ever given someone a little push to get over a hill while using a power meter, or been pushed, a few tens of watts can make a huge difference in your fatigue and recovery by keeping you from having to go over AT and recover repeatedly.  

And if you've ever given someone a little push to get over a hill while using a power meter, or been pushed, a few tens of watts can make a huge difference in your fatigue and recovery by keeping you from having to go over AT and recover repeatedly.  

A good amateur cyclist can do 300W sustained per hour. A properly doped up Grand Tour winning cyclist does 500W sustained. A sprinter is doing about 2000W, but over 10-20 seconds only.
Tesla batteries (Panasonic laptop batteries last I checked) are 250WH per kg.
If you can give a soldier for the cost of say 5kg in batteries an extra 50W for 24h, that’s actually a lot of power.

EDIT: This obviously implies 100% efficiency, but even at 50% this is not an insignificant benefit.

Article on a Russian former engineer involved in ICBM design.
There are caveats to their understanding and breadth of knowledge but very interesting insights to the production and readiness of the deterrent forces. 
TLDR -  deeply corrupt procurement and manufacturing,  strong probability of failure in a significant percentage of built missiles- but certainly still enough to annihilate us all.