chrisl

Or if they set a lot of T-72s on fire.

"Dude" is gender neutral.  (edit: when used in the second person)
FWIW, it doesn't take long to get used to using NB pronouns, especially "they/them", since it's already a fairly common thing in English anyway.

They're still out there. (the pasted link doesn't retain the street map setting, so you should toggle that on).  There's one little red dot on Bakhmut.
The cold wet ground in itself shouldn't be a problem - they're just looking for emission in certain wavelengths, and with cold wet ground the contrast between hot spots and background should be better.  I haven't looked into the details, but they probably aren't really sensitive to the individual shells so much as the aftereffects, like things burning.  With fewer buildings left to burn in the heavily fought over areas, and the terrain being wet and/or frozen there's probably not a lot of brush burning, either.  Get an ammo dump burning and that ought to show up.
edit: Bellingcat has a fairly long article on using the FIRMS maps to look for artillery attacks.  I suspect if you download the raw data you may also be able to tease out some smaller/shorter duration hot spots.  It may need to be combined with data from other satellites to be effective at the small stuff.

They're still out there. (the pasted link doesn't retain the street map setting, so you should toggle that on).  There's one little red dot on Bakhmut.
The cold wet ground in itself shouldn't be a problem - they're just looking for emission in certain wavelengths, and with cold wet ground the contrast between hot spots and background should be better.  I haven't looked into the details, but they probably aren't really sensitive to the individual shells so much as the aftereffects, like things burning.  With fewer buildings left to burn in the heavily fought over areas, and the terrain being wet and/or frozen there's probably not a lot of brush burning, either.  Get an ammo dump burning and that ought to show up.
edit: Bellingcat has a fairly long article on using the FIRMS maps to look for artillery attacks.  I suspect if you download the raw data you may also be able to tease out some smaller/shorter duration hot spots.  It may need to be combined with data from other satellites to be effective at the small stuff.

There are lots of people working on distributed sensor/actor systems that work like this with no humans in the loop at all. A big difference in issues around adoption is that they're generally intended to not kill people at all, rather than having to separate good and bad people to kill (c.f. The Evil Bit)
 
That's essentially how incident command works for wildland firefighting at the urban interface.  LA County has been doing it since before I moved here in the mid 1990s, but the basic principle is that whoever gets to the fire first is in charge until they do a formal handoff, and other agencies come in as fast as they can and take direction, basically ignoring pre-existing levels of authority (city/county/state/multiple federal) until they get a command center organized and do the handoff.  San Diego wasn't doing that in 2003 and got themselves tied in C2 knots at city boundaries while the whole county burned.  They got it mostly fixed by 2007 and had a much better response when the fires broke out then.  It's also still a work in progress - LA County and the Forest Service had some conflicts about nighttime use of water dropping helos in 2009 that ended up taking a few years to sort out policies on, because LA City and County have better nighttime capability than the feds.

I've been thinking about this since the MC/DC discussion came up, and struggle a little to fully agree with this.
My first thought was along the lines of what you wrote here: if you have "perfect" ISR and comms, then you can run DC very effectively.  In principle all the way down to the individual level with Borg spotting.  And then as you lose ISR and/or the ability to get it to the pointy end, the pointy end has to shift to MC, with the caveat that they need to have some "far point" to keep them from getting too far out in front of the rest of the mission.
But then I thought about RU and the timetables.  Aren't they essentially using DC in the near absence of C4ISR?  At best they seem to have C2.5R, and even that's questionable.  So they give a detailed timetable and punish flexibility, leading the lower echelons to just keep throwing meat into the grinder until they run out.  
The difference, of course, is training.  RU has more rigid training to start with, apparently less combined arms training than a box of CMBO, and has to resort to fairly crude DC because that's all they can do.  "Go that way, annihilate anything in your path, be at point X by Y time, then stop.  If you turn around, Wagner will shoot you." 
So what you really need to train is the continuum and the transition.  If we take the extreme limit with the totally integrated battlefield, you start out with DC, but even there, if you micromanage/DC too much you might as well just have robots/UXVs, each controlled by an individual far back from the lines.  And then those robots need autonomy to switch to their robotic version of MC when they lose C2. Ideally it's progressive autonomy that fills in little gaps when the comm loss is short, and increasing, including a defined mission goal and maybe local meshing to neighboring bots who are also out of comm back to the rear.  We don't have that level of AI yet, so we send "robots with wetware" - well trained infantry who can work with DC when it's available and understand why that's a good thing, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense, and then transition smoothly to whatever level of MC is necessary as the integration disintegrates.
 

The fire systems do create organized mass.  One of the things they've finally learned is that it's much better to overmatch a fire when it's small than wait to see how bad it might get.  We can go from zero to tens of trucks from at least 3 jurisdictions in minutes and a small city of firefighters in a couple days.  It's pretty amazing to watch, though preferable not with the firefighters in your yard.  
 

I've been thinking about this since the MC/DC discussion came up, and struggle a little to fully agree with this.
My first thought was along the lines of what you wrote here: if you have "perfect" ISR and comms, then you can run DC very effectively.  In principle all the way down to the individual level with Borg spotting.  And then as you lose ISR and/or the ability to get it to the pointy end, the pointy end has to shift to MC, with the caveat that they need to have some "far point" to keep them from getting too far out in front of the rest of the mission.
But then I thought about RU and the timetables.  Aren't they essentially using DC in the near absence of C4ISR?  At best they seem to have C2.5R, and even that's questionable.  So they give a detailed timetable and punish flexibility, leading the lower echelons to just keep throwing meat into the grinder until they run out.  
The difference, of course, is training.  RU has more rigid training to start with, apparently less combined arms training than a box of CMBO, and has to resort to fairly crude DC because that's all they can do.  "Go that way, annihilate anything in your path, be at point X by Y time, then stop.  If you turn around, Wagner will shoot you." 
So what you really need to train is the continuum and the transition.  If we take the extreme limit with the totally integrated battlefield, you start out with DC, but even there, if you micromanage/DC too much you might as well just have robots/UXVs, each controlled by an individual far back from the lines.  And then those robots need autonomy to switch to their robotic version of MC when they lose C2. Ideally it's progressive autonomy that fills in little gaps when the comm loss is short, and increasing, including a defined mission goal and maybe local meshing to neighboring bots who are also out of comm back to the rear.  We don't have that level of AI yet, so we send "robots with wetware" - well trained infantry who can work with DC when it's available and understand why that's a good thing, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense, and then transition smoothly to whatever level of MC is necessary as the integration disintegrates.
 

"Dude" is gender neutral.  (edit: when used in the second person)
FWIW, it doesn't take long to get used to using NB pronouns, especially "they/them", since it's already a fairly common thing in English anyway.

"Dude" is gender neutral.  (edit: when used in the second person)
FWIW, it doesn't take long to get used to using NB pronouns, especially "they/them", since it's already a fairly common thing in English anyway.

"Dude" is gender neutral.  (edit: when used in the second person)
FWIW, it doesn't take long to get used to using NB pronouns, especially "they/them", since it's already a fairly common thing in English anyway.

I think China is just posturing.  They are playing RU for cheap oil, playing the US for concessions of some sort, while looking both troublesome and a source of conciliation.  It's all just Xi playing some cards. 
I do think, probably quite naively, that China doesn't actually want to see any chinese made suicide drones hitting UKR preschools anytime soon.  Some surveillance drones, sure. 

How could it succeed? It's given nothing to Ukraine. You're looking at this from a Great Powers Make The Big Decsions angle but Ukraine is not some teeny weeny Balkan nobody. It's several tens of millions strong, armed to the teeth, slugging it evenly with the Ivan and winning  and mad as hell. They're in an existencial fight and even then are aware that they'll probably have to fight again in the not-to-far future.  Their children will inherit the Russian problem. 
They're not gonna take it anymore, and there's absolutely zero anything  China can do to affect that mental decision point -  except overtly and substantially taking Russia's side, which would directly contradict the intentions you suggest above. 
China has no pull on Ukraine. So no peace deal is going to happen from Chinese pressure or influence angling, but from American. And if China starts Dickie g around in the war,  then America is in no way going to listen to their offers. It'll just outspend them and American society can take a hell of a lot more spending and not fracture than China. 

That's an internal confliction within an absurdity. A state backed digital coinage issued by China, first taken up by Russia, then the tiny number of other pariah states, then some more tin pot banana republics in the Third World... Is going to somehow undercut the Western backed,  already in use, easy to trade and deeply familiar American Dollar? 
I mean,  sure,  no one expects the Spanish Inquisition - but that's the Spanish Flea Circus National Judeaen Peoples Liberation Front of The Knight's Who Say Nee! 

I try not to fuss... but I can't deal with crypto stuff on this thread. 

Yeah, I'd wait to see what they actually send and shows up in Russian hands rather than listening to what they say.  Xi is at risk of taking over the Mutter Courage role by dealing equipment to both sides in return for cash or fossil fuels.  I'm not convinced he's as foolish as Putin, and he knows very well how much Chinese well-being (and thus willingness to tolerate his regime) comes from the west vs. from Russia.  So he may say a lot of things publicly that are politically expedient, but his actions are what's important.

Well, it tells us that the rest of the world doesn't buy our pretty Sunday speeches, and rightly so. Our precious western values apply mostly to ourselves and definitely only extend to other regions of the world as far as they don't interfere with our interests. Which usually means we don't give a f*** about autocrats as long they are "our" autocrats and we don't care about human rights when cheap resources and workforce are better accessible without them.
That's why it means nothing to quite a few countries that we are democracies and China and Russia are not. For them it matters how they are treated and as a matter of fact, so far we have a worse track record.
What we should learn from that is that we shouldn't take it for granted that we are seen as the good guys and everyone gathers under our banner. If this is to become a clash of systems then we better make sure to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world through deeds not words.

1 year of the war is passed. From the start of the invasion and to the huge count of air and missile strikes. One of my friends has been killed by wagner artillery in Bohorodichne village near Bakhumt. My father-in-law has been killed by storming the defensive enemy positions in the Kherson region 1st of October. I gave 3 of my salaries (all what I have)on the first day of the war on the military budget. Thanks to all of you, thanks for your help. Taking carry of our refugees, helping our soldiers to destroy enemy forces with AT weapons, artillery, APS, AFV, and Tanks, peoples who served in foreign legions. Thank you for giving billions of money to support our economy. Special thanks to battlefront for small support for me, when I asked about a discount, they gave me 2 games with all DLCs for free - I didn't expect this. Some of my relatives were in Kherson in occupation, and all high-value electronic and expensive things were looted from them by Russian forces. And now we don't fear rocket strikes (10 times they exploded 700-1000m from my house) we don't fear nuclear threat, we don't fear the second army in the world and you shouldnt. Sorry for we English would that what I want to say for all of you, I can tell you many things about the war but first i will try to improve my language knowlages.

Ok and @Kinophile can jump in on this one too.  So we are muddying up some stuff here, so to clarify:
- The original point on MC vs DC was to point out the cultural constipation of conventional services and how they are nowhere near as innovative or open to disruptive thinking as is often sold.  Over the military generations, military doctrine becomes dogma and counter-thinking in an organization that literally exists to create uniformity in behaviour is not well accepted.  We in the west have built a democratic myth of "empowerment and gumption" but it really does not translate well into actual military reality.  We can debate this but I know what I have lived for the better part of 3.5 decades. 
- The UA is a hybrid mix of Soviet and Western schools, and for them I think this was a major advantage.  It was not because we peppered them with western doctrine and training, it was because they had both worlds to pull from.  If we had an all western force in this thing, with the same restraints/constraints and capabilities as the UA, my hypothesis is that we would have done worse because we would have tried to apply an all-western approach.  I can definitely see in Phase I where this would have gotten us into a lot of trouble.  The UA is already outside of boxes and pulling in so much from the civilian side so quickly also helped in breaking doctrinal group-think and creating whatever this has turned into.  As to which school MC or DC, that the UA employs I do not think we have a clear idea but it is also likely a hybrid - which was how the entire thing was actually designed to work.
- MC vs DC schools of thought.  Ok, this is a whole other thing.  Mission Command is a essentially (and I will just use my own descriptions, feel free to go look up others) is essentially empowered command.  It arms subordinates with context and intent, "why we are doing this and here is what we are looking for".  This, plus allowing them to exercise initiative to exploit opportunity - the alignment of circumstance, context and capability, theoretically provides a force with higher potential for tempo advantage.  The thinking goes that empowered tactical commanders can see opportunity well before formation level and as such if they exploit it without waiting to be told the entire force can OODA faster than an opponent.  This is a cornerstone of Manoeuvre Warfare which is really a strategy of Annihilation through Dislocation.  We seriously bought off on all this and drank the Kool Aid on it about 40 years ago, to the point it became so dogmatic that it left little room for counter thought.
DC is one of mission control being held at higher levels.  Subordinates are empowered to do a task (The terms are actually derived from the Germans largely because Depuy and Starry really were hot for German warfare - Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik, The first meaning "mission tactics" the second "detailed orders tactics").  They then wait for further direction before exploiting opportunity.  They can still execute initiative in execution of the task but not the overall mission. 
So was born the Great American Military Myth (and frankly almost every western nation jumped onboard).  We were a democratized military built on "good ol 'merican innovation and initiative."  Further this All-Yankee Doodle (sorry but we really got beat over the head on this one back in the day) approach is very economic as it yields quick nearly bloodless wars.  The Persian Gulf became the poster child for this type of warfare, but more than few put up their hands and asked if it wasn't a false-positive.  The Gulf War was highly attritional and mostly driven by air supremacy - the land battle of mission command and manoeuvre warfare was basically executed against an already beaten foe, and one crushed by far more Detailed Command approaches of the Air Force. (This brings up the other problem with the Kool Aid, it really does not work for either the Navy or Air Force - and does not work enough for SOF, kinda).  
The truth is far more complicated.  The largest problem with Mission Command is that while it is great in theory it runs into serious problems in full execution because of all those pesky enablers.  Tactical commanders can run all over the place all empowered but there is only so much ISR, artillery, engineers and logistics to go around.  So what really happens is far more control in practice.  The Main Effort gets a lot more empowerment but if you are on a side gig, well you might very well get held back because the boss simply does not have the stuff to support you if you go all manouvrey.  Detail Command it far to restrictive and you get into micromanagement, so in reality neither systems works in extremes.
The future.  Well the problem was seen coming way back during the RMA days.  "What happens when a higher level commander knows more than a tactical one?"  I suspect if the UA has created a sort of ad hoc JADC2 system then this has already happened.  If a higher formation commander knows more than the tactical level, then DC starts to make a lot more sense.  And then what does Manoeuvre Warfare turn into? Well a form of Corrosive Warfare is one option apparently.  There is a lot of sense to this, we already do it with unmanned systems, which are going to expand in use not contract.  Detail Command that controls the battlespace like a production line and not a jazz band is not totally out of the question.  
So at one end we have "lets go all DC because higher can see all".  While at the other end we have "remove higher command entirely."  This is hyper-Mission Command, or self-synchronization.  Here tactical units are loaded up and basically command themselves with their peers - this gets a lot of traction in SOF circles. They then share enablers in a hand-off system where "higher" is really coordination and not command and control.  Here we get into military effects clouds and inverted command systems.  This also makes some sense but many are shy as to human nature.  How are enablers going to be shared?  This is always a friction point, and higher commanders are the referees.  What happens if we get rid of them.  Some have suggested AI does the job as it can calculate requirements far faster than a human can, or a human AI pairing because human can do context.
So in the end there is no "answer".  We should continue to try both, and maybe have a C2 system that can swing wildly from one to the other based on good ol human art of war.  But service cultures and equities already get in the way.  This is way tanks got resisted, the machine gun and even unmanned systems.  We make idols of our history and sometimes it gets in the way of evolution.  Experimentation and paying attention to wars like these are absolutely critical as we can start to get some idea of where things are going and then plan to adapt at a better rate than an opponent.      

Much of that $30B (and the many $Billions more committed) that will get recycled into the US economy was spent years ago (in the US) building stuff that we sent/are sending/will send.  Some of which was/is essentially retired and never going to be used again anyway - it's probably cheaper to ship it to Ukraine to get blown up and recycled there than to pay for disposal in the US. It's not like all the big defense companies just have parking lots and warehouses of materiel to send if we send truckloads of cash - we're sending it mostly from long since paid-for stock.  And then most of the rest of the military aid will get spent in the US, too, because where is the US going to buy high end US military equipment from other than the US MIC?  
The main actual cash outlays that go overseas are humanitarian aid and some fraction of the shipping cost.

I think it says a lot about his training and/or experience. My direct experience is sports, but the principle is the same - you train over and over and over so that when you're totally wrecked and barely functioning, the skills you need to keep moving are just automatic.  He kept a steady flow and variety of stuff going smoothly and didn't eff up.  That comes from a lot of practice in less stressful conditions.

This could be brilliant move - engaging with China in negotiations could have the benefit of keeping China on the sidelines. Not to say Zelensky has to agree to anything, just keep them talking. China wants to be seen as a peacemaker, can't do that if they're feeding the fire. China is focused on China - they don't want to harm existing trade deals and they probably have their eye on reconstruction/re-arming contracts no matter the outcome of the war.

Much of that $30B (and the many $Billions more committed) that will get recycled into the US economy was spent years ago (in the US) building stuff that we sent/are sending/will send.  Some of which was/is essentially retired and never going to be used again anyway - it's probably cheaper to ship it to Ukraine to get blown up and recycled there than to pay for disposal in the US. It's not like all the big defense companies just have parking lots and warehouses of materiel to send if we send truckloads of cash - we're sending it mostly from long since paid-for stock.  And then most of the rest of the military aid will get spent in the US, too, because where is the US going to buy high end US military equipment from other than the US MIC?  
The main actual cash outlays that go overseas are humanitarian aid and some fraction of the shipping cost.

Yeah, I'd wait to see what they actually send and shows up in Russian hands rather than listening to what they say.  Xi is at risk of taking over the Mutter Courage role by dealing equipment to both sides in return for cash or fossil fuels.  I'm not convinced he's as foolish as Putin, and he knows very well how much Chinese well-being (and thus willingness to tolerate his regime) comes from the west vs. from Russia.  So he may say a lot of things publicly that are politically expedient, but his actions are what's important.

Much of that $30B (and the many $Billions more committed) that will get recycled into the US economy was spent years ago (in the US) building stuff that we sent/are sending/will send.  Some of which was/is essentially retired and never going to be used again anyway - it's probably cheaper to ship it to Ukraine to get blown up and recycled there than to pay for disposal in the US. It's not like all the big defense companies just have parking lots and warehouses of materiel to send if we send truckloads of cash - we're sending it mostly from long since paid-for stock.  And then most of the rest of the military aid will get spent in the US, too, because where is the US going to buy high end US military equipment from other than the US MIC?  
The main actual cash outlays that go overseas are humanitarian aid and some fraction of the shipping cost.