chrisl

The eternal truth of a mafia state from Miller's Crossing:
"You run it because people think you do. They stop thinking it you stop running it."
There's also a basic issue of bandwidth. Putin has centralized the entire war to a narrow circle around him. They  simply don't have the time or the skill set to get a handle on new developments as they are struggling already to manage old developments. Their ooda loop just can't keep up any more and control is slipping in broadening waves. 

It's certainly a lot easier to figure out what's going on in daytime videos.  
CMOS and CCD sensors have some sensitivity in the very near IR (700 nm out to 1 micron wavelength) - basically what you get with consumer security cameras in the <$100 range.  For most applications there's a filter in front of the sensor to take that out, but cameras intended for security cams often are unfiltered.  They're not super sensitive, so most security cameras also have a bunch of IR LEDs to light up the scene - for battery operated cameras with a motion sensor they'll use whatever background light there is for sensing, then turn on the LEDs when there's motion.  The catch with that is that the illumination is very short range - effectively tens of feet.  You can work without the illuminators, but the sensitivity of the cameras is pretty low, so you won't get nearly as many targets as in the daytime.  If the targets have bad IR discipline (which the Russians very well might), you might get a reasonable number of targets, but it will be relatively hard to navigate the drone without it showing GPS on a map.
Longer wave IR gets more expensive fast - the sensors are more expensive (and more export restricted), and generally have to be cooled.  Thermoelectric coolers are very low efficiency and will suck a lot of battery.  There are some very small cryocoolers that are more efficient, but still likely to suck quite a bit of power, and use up a lot of the payload mass. So that kind of thing is probably more limited to the bigger and less expendable drones (and things like GlobalHawk)
 

If they're truly going through tens of thousands of drones/FPV munitions every month, they probably have enough of them to destroy every single Russian vehicle all the way to the Ukraine border and Sea of Azov.  That's better than A-10s providing CAS - drones will appear to be everywhere, and loss of any one (or dozen) drone is insignificant to the Ukrainian effort.  One truck on a road is hard to justify risking a CAS aircraft for, but a couple of drones?  At least one of which is expected to explode anyway?  Launch 'em.  They can create a "no drive zone" 100 km wide all the way to the Azov (or up to and beyond the Russian border), they can severely limit resupply to any dug in defenders over a very large area, then go through and mop up in detail using all the fancy NATO ground kit after running the defenders low on supplies.

It's certainly a lot easier to figure out what's going on in daytime videos.  
CMOS and CCD sensors have some sensitivity in the very near IR (700 nm out to 1 micron wavelength) - basically what you get with consumer security cameras in the <$100 range.  For most applications there's a filter in front of the sensor to take that out, but cameras intended for security cams often are unfiltered.  They're not super sensitive, so most security cameras also have a bunch of IR LEDs to light up the scene - for battery operated cameras with a motion sensor they'll use whatever background light there is for sensing, then turn on the LEDs when there's motion.  The catch with that is that the illumination is very short range - effectively tens of feet.  You can work without the illuminators, but the sensitivity of the cameras is pretty low, so you won't get nearly as many targets as in the daytime.  If the targets have bad IR discipline (which the Russians very well might), you might get a reasonable number of targets, but it will be relatively hard to navigate the drone without it showing GPS on a map.
Longer wave IR gets more expensive fast - the sensors are more expensive (and more export restricted), and generally have to be cooled.  Thermoelectric coolers are very low efficiency and will suck a lot of battery.  There are some very small cryocoolers that are more efficient, but still likely to suck quite a bit of power, and use up a lot of the payload mass. So that kind of thing is probably more limited to the bigger and less expendable drones (and things like GlobalHawk)
 

If they're truly going through tens of thousands of drones/FPV munitions every month, they probably have enough of them to destroy every single Russian vehicle all the way to the Ukraine border and Sea of Azov.  That's better than A-10s providing CAS - drones will appear to be everywhere, and loss of any one (or dozen) drone is insignificant to the Ukrainian effort.  One truck on a road is hard to justify risking a CAS aircraft for, but a couple of drones?  At least one of which is expected to explode anyway?  Launch 'em.  They can create a "no drive zone" 100 km wide all the way to the Azov (or up to and beyond the Russian border), they can severely limit resupply to any dug in defenders over a very large area, then go through and mop up in detail using all the fancy NATO ground kit after running the defenders low on supplies.

It's certainly a lot easier to figure out what's going on in daytime videos.  
CMOS and CCD sensors have some sensitivity in the very near IR (700 nm out to 1 micron wavelength) - basically what you get with consumer security cameras in the <$100 range.  For most applications there's a filter in front of the sensor to take that out, but cameras intended for security cams often are unfiltered.  They're not super sensitive, so most security cameras also have a bunch of IR LEDs to light up the scene - for battery operated cameras with a motion sensor they'll use whatever background light there is for sensing, then turn on the LEDs when there's motion.  The catch with that is that the illumination is very short range - effectively tens of feet.  You can work without the illuminators, but the sensitivity of the cameras is pretty low, so you won't get nearly as many targets as in the daytime.  If the targets have bad IR discipline (which the Russians very well might), you might get a reasonable number of targets, but it will be relatively hard to navigate the drone without it showing GPS on a map.
Longer wave IR gets more expensive fast - the sensors are more expensive (and more export restricted), and generally have to be cooled.  Thermoelectric coolers are very low efficiency and will suck a lot of battery.  There are some very small cryocoolers that are more efficient, but still likely to suck quite a bit of power, and use up a lot of the payload mass. So that kind of thing is probably more limited to the bigger and less expendable drones (and things like GlobalHawk)
 

If they're truly going through tens of thousands of drones/FPV munitions every month, they probably have enough of them to destroy every single Russian vehicle all the way to the Ukraine border and Sea of Azov.  That's better than A-10s providing CAS - drones will appear to be everywhere, and loss of any one (or dozen) drone is insignificant to the Ukrainian effort.  One truck on a road is hard to justify risking a CAS aircraft for, but a couple of drones?  At least one of which is expected to explode anyway?  Launch 'em.  They can create a "no drive zone" 100 km wide all the way to the Azov (or up to and beyond the Russian border), they can severely limit resupply to any dug in defenders over a very large area, then go through and mop up in detail using all the fancy NATO ground kit after running the defenders low on supplies.

Send your firefighters to Southern California to learn.  LA City and County have been using air assets at night for I think decades now, and about 10 years ago basically forced the US Forest Service to start night flying, as well.  Forest Service had prohibited night flying since the early 70's due to a mid-air collision, and refused to revisit the decision as technology changed.  LA County uses a civilian conversion of Blackhawks (Firehawks) for night flying, and I think LA City is still using old Hueys with NVG.  But they both fly at night and close to fires - I've had fires near my house that were in very steep terrain that were suppressed entirely by helo drops before they could hike anybody to them.  They also do direct drops on fires using fixed wings, which can be crazy to watch.  I usually can only watch on ADS-BExchange so I can see exactly where the fire is.
I think the search and rescue teams are using drones to some extent now, but nobody allows drones when there are helos in the area and there are enough helos around here that there's almost always one with FLIR during nighttime SAR.  They're expensive to operate, and the terrain here can be very difficult for them to get close enough, so the idea of drones that are smaller and don't put any humans at risk until you load up the person to be rescued would be an improvement.

Interesting facts of mobilization in LDNR issued in own statistic Russian colonel-genaral Burdinskiy, chief of Main organization and mobilization directorate of General Staff. 
According this information for 22 day of partial mobilization (Nov 10 - Dec 2) were mobilized more than 300 000 of citizens and formed about 280 units. Among this 300 000, 79 800 were mobilized from DNR and LNR (almost 27 %)
This number in 79800 can be multiple in several times, but how much were mobilized in LDNR still unknown. According to unofficial info on summer 2022 were mobilized 140 000 so far. And unknown how much were mobilized in two next waves from July to November 2022 and from Decenber to June 2023.
According to official info of LDNR  "authorities" there are 3,5 millions lived on occupied territories in summer 2022 (UN assessment 2,8 millions). 45 % of them were men.  So, mobilization potential "to last man" in LDNR could be about 976 000 and very likely 400-500 000 of them already were mobilized. Number of their losses still unknown. 
Source: https://defence-ua.com/news/pid_chas_chastkovoji_mobilizatsiji_do_armiji_rashistiv_lishe_za_22_dni_zabrili_80_tisjach-11778.html
Example of that their losses are extremaly high showing this video, filmed in previous days somewhere on Kupiansk direction (red tapes usually wear LDNR fighters)
 

Like Erdogan or not - it is a stable government. And he knows how to make deals. Thus, a new NATO command center in Turkey means that Sweden will join NATO really soon.

Greetings everyone. Long-time lurker who has been reading this thread since 23rd Feb of 2022 and now wants to step out of the shadows to thank everyone who has contributed. It has been a fascinating and informative experience to read through it all day by day, despite the tragedy which has brought everyone in this thread together.
I will likely spend the vast majority of my time continuing to lurk, since I do not have the military knowledge to give valuable commentary on most relevant things, but in this first post, I wanted to provide a short summary of an article from the Berlin branch office of a Swiss newspaper which is about planned changes to NATO structure. While it is not directly about the situation of Ukraine, the planned changes described therein seem to be a direct result of the (renewed) invasion of '22 and thus I think it still fits to the topic.
Google translate has not worked for me on this website, maybe it does for someone else who wants to read it in its entirely:
https://www.nzz.ch/international/neue-nato-struktur-deutschland-macht-wieder-grosse-ankuendigungen-ld.1740692 
Here is the summary:
General Christopher Cavoli and a small team has been working on a plans to reorganize the structure of NATO for about a year and these plans will be presented at the next meeting of NATO head of states in Vilnius on 11th and 12th of July Newspaper claims as sources 1) a team member who is involved in the planning and 2) a high-ranking ex officer who claimed to be familiar with the work Germany will have to prepapre to become a more important administrative and logistical hub for NATO NATO is aware of how the Russian attack on Ukraine has turned the world upside down, and in Brussels and Mons, Cold War terminolgy and plans are being pulled out of dusty folders  Below the Mons HQ and the 3 regional operative HQs of Brunssum, Napoli and Norfolk, two new army staff commands will be created, called "Army North" and "Army South". Army North will be located at the American base in Wiesbaden, Army South in Izmir. Both Army North and Army South will be responsible to coordinate NATO troops organised as corps, divisions, brigades and battalions the reorgnisation and expansion of staff is the result of both the Russian invasion and of newly acquired members in Eastern Europe which have to be more integrated (and also pay heed to the fact that e.g. Poland has now 4 full army divisions and thus is a larger contributor than e.g. Germany) new defensive plans for the three regional HQs Brunssum, Napoli and Norfolk  Americans want the new Army North and Army south command staff to become operable as soon as possible, which is one reason why they will be staffed to a large part by American officers from their Europe and Africa commands, since no other member state has the same number of available trained staff officers. This is also why an alternative suggestion to build up and place the two command HQs in Poland and Romania was rejected Cavoli's plans indicate that there will be 9 to 12 new army corps in Europe which will be fully staffed - a lot of the existing army corps from the Cold War still exist but only on paper, without any bodies so far it is planned a corps will contain 2 to 3 divisions with a strength of ca. 20.000 each the total numerical strength is not yet decided, but the number of quickly available troops will be increased from currently 40.000 to 300.000 ("New Force Model") NATO "Joint Support and Enabling Command" in Ulm, Germany will receive a significant increase in staff and will be responsible for overseeing the supply via ports, railway and air transport which will be routed mostly through Germany  the plans expect that half of the "New Force Model" troops will come from North America, the other half from European member states Europe is woefully behind in terms of ground-based air defense, especially against ballistic missiles and drones, and a new program is supposed to increase the number of European AD  German government continues to promise that it will provide 17.000 troops forthe  "Allied Reaction Force" which is supposed to form a strategic reserve with enough ammo for 30 days of operation, but German MoD will have to be honest in Vilnius if they can actually keep this promise.  Germany also promised to provide at least 30.000 troops which can be quickly relocated, but it is not yet decided which readiness level the troops will have - either 10 days, 30 days or 100 days German troops require improved communication equipment to integrate with NATO, and new digital radio are supposed to arrive until end of 2024 - another topic German MoD is expected to provide an honest outlook about at Vilnius If anyone sees any error, please inform. I find these kinds of planned changed to NATO very interesting due to the wider implications for the Ukraine conflict but also the global security order. If this article toook me for a fool and none of this is realistic, I apologise. As I said, I lack modern military knowledge. 
 

Drones should be very susceptible to EW, given that they need a two-way connection and are sending fairly high data volumes of video.  The FPVs don't need super high resolution, particularly if there are other overwatch drones in the area, but they still need better than NTSC and the overwatch drones are all HD.  Part of why Ukraine has been so successful with them is the Russia is so limited in their EW ability.  They probably can't produce enough interference in the drones to render them useless without taking out their own comms (bad as those comms might also be).  
The next generations of drones for dealing with more capable EW systems will likely see a lot more autonomy, and also narrow field of view communication back to the controller.  But autonomy will really be critical - get them into the right zone and let them loose.  Not something that would have been suitable for most of the conflicts the US has been involved in for the past 25-30 years, where armed targets are hidden in populated civilian areas and often indistinguishable, but reasonable for a conventional war with battle lines, uniforms, and identifiable military vehicles.

Drones should be very susceptible to EW, given that they need a two-way connection and are sending fairly high data volumes of video.  The FPVs don't need super high resolution, particularly if there are other overwatch drones in the area, but they still need better than NTSC and the overwatch drones are all HD.  Part of why Ukraine has been so successful with them is the Russia is so limited in their EW ability.  They probably can't produce enough interference in the drones to render them useless without taking out their own comms (bad as those comms might also be).  
The next generations of drones for dealing with more capable EW systems will likely see a lot more autonomy, and also narrow field of view communication back to the controller.  But autonomy will really be critical - get them into the right zone and let them loose.  Not something that would have been suitable for most of the conflicts the US has been involved in for the past 25-30 years, where armed targets are hidden in populated civilian areas and often indistinguishable, but reasonable for a conventional war with battle lines, uniforms, and identifiable military vehicles.

Drones should be very susceptible to EW, given that they need a two-way connection and are sending fairly high data volumes of video.  The FPVs don't need super high resolution, particularly if there are other overwatch drones in the area, but they still need better than NTSC and the overwatch drones are all HD.  Part of why Ukraine has been so successful with them is the Russia is so limited in their EW ability.  They probably can't produce enough interference in the drones to render them useless without taking out their own comms (bad as those comms might also be).  
The next generations of drones for dealing with more capable EW systems will likely see a lot more autonomy, and also narrow field of view communication back to the controller.  But autonomy will really be critical - get them into the right zone and let them loose.  Not something that would have been suitable for most of the conflicts the US has been involved in for the past 25-30 years, where armed targets are hidden in populated civilian areas and often indistinguishable, but reasonable for a conventional war with battle lines, uniforms, and identifiable military vehicles.

Possible?  Sure.  But it probably takes a lot of luck.  The radar signature of the drone will be really small, so that's not going to be that effective for a hit.  The TOR system also can use optical tracking/guiding, but unless you can keep the drone in the crosshairs it's probably going to be hard to get a direct hit.  Even if the missile has proximity triggers, they're probably not sensitive enough that a drone will set them off as the missile approaches.

Possible?  Sure.  But it probably takes a lot of luck.  The radar signature of the drone will be really small, so that's not going to be that effective for a hit.  The TOR system also can use optical tracking/guiding, but unless you can keep the drone in the crosshairs it's probably going to be hard to get a direct hit.  Even if the missile has proximity triggers, they're probably not sensitive enough that a drone will set them off as the missile approaches.

Possible?  Sure.  But it probably takes a lot of luck.  The radar signature of the drone will be really small, so that's not going to be that effective for a hit.  The TOR system also can use optical tracking/guiding, but unless you can keep the drone in the crosshairs it's probably going to be hard to get a direct hit.  Even if the missile has proximity triggers, they're probably not sensitive enough that a drone will set them off as the missile approaches.

But the video is a lie!  There's just a still.
I did find the video over on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingas****/comments/13zicbr/a_ukrainian_drone_operator_dodges_a_russian_tor2m/
 

Biden's just carrying on a tradition.

 
 
 

Yeah, those cracks are weird and they don't quite make sense.  
Concrete (at least well made concrete) is super strong in compression and weak in tension - that's why it has rebar in it.  The steel rebar is strong in tension and weak in compression.  Together they make well-made reinforced concrete extremely tough.  
Those cracks are weird because they're parallel to the load, long, and consistent from column to column.  And they may be deep.  My best guess is that they're from thermal expansion, and the rebar structures inside them were built by guys who even the FL condo industry wouldn't take.  They look like the internal rebar structures were made in halves that were supposed to be tied together with lengths of rebar that extend from each half into the other half and are tied to the opposing structure. Except they weren't tied.  And the lengths that are supposed to extend across may not extend across.  So when the concrete temperature cycles, it develops cracks on the part that's not reinforced. The way the cracks jump back and forth at close to right angles seems to support that - it may have been weakly tied and those are the lines along which the ties were weak or missing.
Also note that those two pics are different structures - one of them has the smaller base atop the square base and the other doesn't.  Especially weird is that the smaller base doesn't appear to show any cracking at all - the cracks coming down the pillars should have extended into that, at least a little, unless it's a completely separate pour and we can't see the lines because of the photo resolution.  It might also be my imagination that you can see separate pour sections in each of the columns (sometimes the cracks zig at what appear to be the boundaries) so there could be a lot of variation in the concrete quality.  I'd guess it's mostly not too terrible, since we don't see a lot of spalling or horizontal cracks around the circumference at the points where it looks like the different pours are.
In the one that doesn't have a smaller base across the square pier, there's a little line of discoloration that might be a sign of a crack partway between the columns, or it may be nothing, it's hard to tell from the resolution.  The bases generally look structurally separate, since the cracks didn't propagate into them.  That's probably not a good thing because it could be easy separation points.
All the cracks look relatively new, since we don't see a lot (or really any) of rust around them that would indicate corrosion from exposure of the rebar to the salt water.  There are non-corroding kinds of rebar, and coatings for steel rebar to keep it from corroding, but I would have expected them to cheap out on something that's invisible in the bridge.
eta: those vertical cracks aren't a new thing, and RU may have been adding things for years to try to mitigate them:
 

I have a weird sense about that western axis.  Most are writing it off because of the river crossing requirement but there are a lot of pluses for doing the big shove here
- Russian force strength are weakest in this area because they also think the river will make it too hard
- Right flank is the Black Sea as opposed to double flanks just about everywhere else.
- Bottle up the RA in Crimea and then push left towards Melitopol makes a lot of sense.
- several MSR options that could support at least 3 axis of advance
If the UA could get across that river in several locations and sustain it, they could crash in on that front, and then do a push down from the north in the center simultaneously it would likely paralyze the RA.  

I never knew that! Probably within blocks of where I lived 88-90.  I've met a bunch of people who lived within about 3 blocks of where I lived at the same time I was there, but only met them after we'd all left.  I still stop in Somerville when I'm out there for work and want to wait for traffic to ease up.

Good guess.
I was thinking we should see if we can concocted a scenario that combines as many of the tropes as we can:
I think he will meet Putin for poison tea on the 10th floor of a hospital. As he is leaving he will loose his balance after shooting himself in the head twice and the chest six times and then fall down four flights of stairs and through a window on the 8th floor.

The Doolittle Raid didn't make much sense and did negligible damage but it rattled the Japanese public. I sense that this was done for a similar reason.

July 10th of last year, regarding why parking garages are unsuitable for ammunition storage. I managed to search it because I recalled the bon mot about a "slapdash Soviet era Trabbie hutch."