The_Capt

BFC pays me by the word…food stamps mostly.

Hey @sfhand this is how to post a counter-position. 2003…mistakes were definitely made. I have to agree that 03 Iraq did far more damage than most understood. It can be argued that it fractured the global order of the Post-Cold War for good. Both Russia and China saw that war and voted with their feet on the new Global Order and there are coherent arguments that they had justification. That said onto this war. “Russia has convinced it people…” is likely what this war is really about. There was no clear and present danger outside of Putin’s own head. Ukraine was not poised to join NATO, they had not even applied. Neither were Sweden or Finland. The western troops in Ukraine were there because Russia took the Crimea and Donbas regions. Our greatest weakness is “The West has not convinced its people….” This is how democracies die. Rarely are democracies destroyed be external forces. They are simply abandoned as a failed experiment. So now we are being tested and our resolve is not great. But to be brutally pragmatic…to the point I will apologize to our Ukrainian posters in advance…this war is likely not existential to the West. It may have been had we completely sat back and did nothing. But we did something, and even if we fail completely, that unity and small resolve cannot be undone easily. If Ukraine completely folds up and Russia rolls to the Polish border. Well “so what?” Well we will create a new Iron Curtain by the next morning. NATO will double down hard and we are essentially in Cold War 2. The West lost Ukraine, but we won Sweden and Finland. Russian economic and diplomatic isolation will deepen to the point that we will likely cut them out completely. So no more shopping trips or sidedoor deals. The West is a really sore loser and we will definitely show it. Russia is broken militarily. No modern military can take these levels of damage and not need a significant amount of recovery time. Sure they can mobilize a million more men, but arming, training and equipping them to be able to be effective on the modern battlefield takes things Russia cannot easily replace - our unmannned systems will work just as well too. The actual threat of Russian military action against an NATO member, even discounting the nuclear equation, is pretty low. So we will live with the worst and keep going. The next problem will be China, but I for one, do not see this relationship through a Cold War lens, at least not yet. China is too big a customer to fail completely. We do too much trade with them to easily fall into a similar situation with Russia (and, yes we did a lot of trade with Russia). But we will have to renegotiate that relationship, which can definitely get bumpy. The world will likely fall back into Us and Them and there are pitfalls there. Finally, I really don’t think the West’s only play has, or will be “the Frontal”. For every Iraq, there was an East Germany. We can and have employed other strategies. We can entice and cooperate. We can incorporate - in fact most in the “this war was justified” camp cite Western encroachment on Russia as the primary reason. The paradox of the West is that we are incredibly powerful, yet we are also incredibly lazy at the same time. The most important question is, as the former begins to wane, will we overcome the latter?

So out of that entire wall of text this is really the only point made about the core subject of this entire thread. The rest is as was noted, “meta”. Again, no citations, no analysis, no insight…simply “wot I think”. Fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how well or poorly informed. Let’s unpack this one kernel of an actual relevant opinion. First off “absurd”. So this statement appears to suggest that anyone who thinks otherwise is lost in a sea of misinformation. It is clearly “obvious” that Ukraine is losing, or at least Russia is not. You seem to be referring to the recent retaking of Adiivka and Russian winter offensive as proof of this. You also seem to infer that we are deluding ourselves otherwise - hence this whole “what is the truth?” thing. So, if you have indeed been following this thread, you will have noted that the state of each party of this war has been a subject of intense debate. We have had plenty of injects that Ukraine is losing, on the edge of collapse and Adiivka is the “beginning of the end”. We have had the counter opinion as well. But let’s just unpack your central position: advancing while your opponent is retreating is a clear sign of winning. [note: you do see the irony of your heuristics argument here, right?] Any student of warfare can come up with dozens of historical examples of this position being simply untrue. A military is a very large complex machine that can still conduct offensive operations even though it is fundamentally broken - Germany 1918, Germany 1944-45, US 1950, US 1969 to name but a few. So to take one tactical offensive, which has been gained at very high cost (or were all those casualties a “false-flag” operation with crisis actor tanks and IFVs?), as “absolute proof” that Russia is indeed not losing this war clearly demonstrates that you are taking a single phenomenon out of context and drawing a broad conclusion. So rather than us trying to prove to you, which is always how these things tend to go, let’s go the other way. Why don’t you do the work and prove it to us? What is the state of the Russian military? Tactically, Operationally and Strategically? What is the state of the Ukrainian military? Based on your assessment, how will the war likely progress? How do the answers to those questions inform future policy? What should those policies be? Most importantly, how can this war end positively for the West? What are the risks and opportunities? Now before you start typing, and I am betting you already think you know answers to these questions, we are going to need to see proof of work. No more vague, “but the truth is unknowable” smoke screen. You clearly have an opinion and one would hope it has been informed. So state the facts you are employing to come to it. Cite some expertise beyond your own that supports your position. Even those trapped in that damned cave have shadows they can make reference to. I am very doubtful you will do any of this to be blunt. The fact that looking up a legal definition of genocide was somehow “only for lawyers and too much work” kinda situates the depths you are willing to go in all this: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf (that took about 2 mins). So to echo your own sentiment - I really do not care what you think you know or don’t know at this point. You have demonstrated no expertise, or leveraging of expertise in any of whatever this has been about. You have employed classic use of “empty uncertainty” by throwing around some pretty junior philosophy and zero actual facts. You are not a military or political analyst, that much is clear. And you do not contribute by pulling in new information. So far you have come onto this thread with “doubt” as a form of offence - you really have not come with honest questions in search of answers…you already have all the answers you want. You basically attacked the regulars on this thread with this uncertainty and then have done the “wounded dove” act as you get pushback. You have to be at least the dozenth person to do this, and you did not even come up with an original spin. Same pattern as every other time - throw out an inflammatory unsupported counter opinion, dance around facts and dress it up as “being real”, act all hurt when you get mauled. Now you will disappear into the woodwork to avoid the ban, or jump off the bridge because this is your hill to die upon for some reason. Or maybe, just maybe, you will go away for awhile and come back with some new facts that create a coherent argument we can actually debate. I would be both shocked and delighted of this were the case.

So was John Kettler.

So if you have been following this thread, for even a little while. You would have noted that we get ones like you in from time to time. Bold, empty self-inflated opinions with no actual study or work behind them. We have little patience for them. They are laughably easy to spot and play versions of the same song. I am attacking you because you do not belong here. You are a bacteria for clear and objective thinking. You, and those like you, come here with agendas and intent to spin, lie and project uncertainty with eyes on a predetermined position of some sort. You do not come here to discuss, learn or add to the discussion. As such you are worthy of attack, or at least your position definitely needs to be confronted. It really won’t matter soon. Because like the rest, you will be on your way out shortly. And we won’t remember you because you blur with the rest.

And once again we get another “believer” posting their opinion like it really matters. Not a single citation or source for these alternate viewpoints. Not even willing to do a 10 min search on the legal definition of genocide. This is not discourse or improving the conversation one wit. It is pure and simple ignorance…”BRIC”…really. Based on your reply you really have zero idea of what is actually happening in this war, but desperately want to believe you do. FFS your response to whether Russia is waging an illegal war is “partially true”. Yet you offer no proof or elaboration of this position. Finally, same question for you that I ask every one like yourself who has come through here…why are you here? How are you actually adding anything to this discussion? If you offered some credible evidence or even some logical positions it might be a start. But no, you roll in with some grade 12 philosophy and tossing “doubt” around like you actually know what you are talking about. To you core question of “who am I to believe”? Assuming this is genuine, I would suggest that you start by listening…stop talking. And then listen for the really good questions. People who really have a bead on things tend to ask the best questions - not like yours, vague and already answered in your head.

Seriously what do they teach kids these days? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology How hard is it to do a google search and go on a personal learning journey? But instead I will go troll a forum? Next he will come back and declare that it was an “honest question” and we are all “sheeple”. “Jesus was not actually born on 25 Dec! Thalidomide! United Fruit Company! C’mon man, it was the ‘global elitist’ who started this war to distract from fluoride in the water!!”

Dude, you promised “one and only post”. Now you are weighing in and trying to defend something that none of are really sure what you are going on about. Your question was “how do we really know what is happening” and then a bunch of conspiracy stuff from Vietnam to Hunter Biden. Misinformation is a thing. Disinformation is a thing. So what is your point? If you are honestly asking how to suss out the truth, or at least something close to it - well go broad in sources, cross check and put in the work. Use Occam’s Razor heavily and avoid huge leaps of logic built on shaky assumptions. The whole Vietnam Pentagon Papers has been so dramatized that the any truth has been lost. Sure the higher ups knew the war was essentially unwinnable, but what were they going to do with that? They did what we always did, kept going and hoped something would change to bail them out. This is not a Star Chamber conspiracy. It is simple “we are f#cked, and all out of ideas”.

And then there is the minor quibble of being a deliberate warcrime. At some point Ukraine is going to want justice (and/or compensation) for warcrimes Russia has committed. Bad idea to throw away the high ground by blowing airliners out of the sky. In this day and age Ukraine does not need some sort of antiquated (and expensive) massive “no-fly zone” that risks that kind of blowback. The US already knows where the Russian military airfields are, and while military aircraft can technically land and refuel at a civilian airport, they cannot rearm and repair - if they did that then the airport is no longer civilian. So a long range air denial capability need only establish no-fly over military airfields. This is also, conveniently, when all military aircraft are forced to fly at “sub-Mach”. We are basically talking about a platform that does what I suspect UK SOF have been doing for some time - go deep, lo profile and wait. If the standoff is a couple hundred kms one could essentially deny military airfield operations. Or better yet, arm them with FASCAM and mine the airfield on a regular basis. That with some cyber and deep IA ops could really hurt the RUAF. This by the way would be a strategic campaign. Ukraine really seems to be leaning into these to effect. It is the one area they are getting better at while Russia is not. Russia is basically doing what it has in the past, lobbing missiles at anything as more of a terror campaign than deliberate effects. Kharkiv power plant has been pointed at as an example of Russia improving their game. Maybe, but it took them over two f#cking years to hit a major power station that should have been obliterated on the first day.

Well we can’t and probably won’t in our lifetimes. The “truth” is a floating point of agreement (are disagreement) among humans. We are essentially a species with brains big enough to invent the big beautiful fictions. We believe in them so hard that they may as well be true because they create conative impulse. I don’t believe in God but Holy Wars are still going to happen. As to the weird string of political conspiracies (John Kettler is that you?). In my experience in government, conspiracies are the rare exception - and they usually get caught out…that is how we know about them. Governments leak like sburke after a few beers on a good day. Most TS stuff is over classified and sitting on 00’s era desktops. The government can barely get above board things done let alone wage an effective mid/dis information campaign against its people. The governments that can have to spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy, over a long period of time, to even get close. Russia tries very hard but we know there are holes in the fence. Hell even NK is not fully able to fully insulate its population from outside info. So while people like you are digging bunkers and fitting for aluminum hats, the reality is that governments are big slow moving bureaucracies good at only one thing…protecting the bureaucracy. Beyond that I am not sure what Neo/Matrix thing you are really talking about. The war? The causes of the war? The progress of the war? We will never really know the truth about any of it in some universal truth because no such human truth exists outside of science. How do I know gravity works like they tell me? Well go jump off a building. As to the rest it is best guesses and close enough. We can see what we can see. What is really weird is that the Information Age should make it impossible to lie. One can quickly verify a lie in the ocean of information out there…that was the theory. But what did we do with that ocean of info? We saw more lies! We linked patterns that are not there. Are you being lied to…definitely. And what should bake you noodle is that because you are a human being the front and center culprit in those lies are not XYZ…it is you, to yourself. We lie to ourselves all the time. We filter, bias, ignore, reject and spin every time you look in the mirror. We lie to ourselves about everything all the time. Welcome to humanity.

Steve got baited into it this time. I am waiting for him to yell at everyone first. I don't think they can legally lock up this thread; it has a BFC board seat now.

Terror groups often operate on some pretty vague or non-linear logic. The fundamentalists are operating largely on faith. That [blank] = God in their minds, so it is pretty hard to see a logical design at times. Very often the “goal” of an attack is any reaction with the hope that it will lead to further opportunities they can jump on. This is really Darwinian warfare - we keep going, and failing, until the opponent makes a mistake we can then evolve into. Broader goals are often very vague and faith based: Allah will give us a Caliphate if we kill enough of them. The actual mechanics of how that Caliphate may actually come into existence are extremely blurry. Hamas was a bit different. Their goals were very likely an Israeli overreaction which would lead to its firm isolation within the region (any talks of Israeli - Saudi rapprochement are dead) with a window for possible widening of the conflict - why the Palestinians keep hoping the rest of the Arab world will ever give a f#ck is beyond me. The opportunity for global isolation, which is effectively occurring, was likely a stretch goal, if they thought of it at all. So behind killing and taking Israeli hostages, which makes the troops feel good, the goal of the Hamas attacks was the reaction, which could then be exploited for political gains. This is the dilemma terrorism projects onto the state and why we label it “asymmetric”. It forces the state to react in order to re-establish certainty, but it can easily do too little or too much. In fact it will very likely do either of those for segments of any population. So the state is thrust into “best of bad” choice sets. This is always good news for a terror group as it opens up the door to opportunity. This is why terrorism would never work within a zombie horde. Zombies can’t get scared and never react outside of “more brains!” A terror attack on zombies will never get a reaction (beyond “more brains”) so it offers little opportunity options space.

This is an excellent analogy.

I try not to get pulled into the ML/AI debate, which can get pretty heated. It is all non-human processing to me. I heard John Arquilla express the same Endpoint scenario - AI becomes so accurate that we do not need to actually conduct the war.

So this is where “AI hype” has led us. Note: this is using the broadest definition of AI. Many would simply call it non-human processing power. The combination of ISR, communication and precision has been the driver of this current “tactical crisis” - which has resulted in operational stalemate, strategic/political anxiety and industrial strain. What I do not know is how deep this will go. Can it be solved in this war? Or is this enduring new reality? My best guess is that more weaponized AI in the form of a forward unmanned envelop is the answer, but that is not proven. We need to really see proof that “mass precision beats everything”.

The fact that the US Military has had multiple expensive failures is not really news. They (and to a lesser extent all western nations) lean towards very large centralized “God Projects” that aim to solve a lot of very big problems all at once. Invariably the systems fail to account for somethings and result in failures. For example, the article never outlines how the IDF AI failed - was it the AI, whoever programmed the AI or who was monitoring the AI reporting? The article appears to be cherry picking high profile failures as “wasted money” as opposed to really outlining where AI in military application stands. Big military, like big government is an easy target for these failures. Of course when the military stops taking risks and tries to play it safe, opponents then cry “Luddite” and “risk adverse” - damned if they do..etc. Regardless, the battlefield in Ukraine is not only highly charged with cheap AI/forward processing in all of those FPVs - it is illuminated by AI empowered C4ISR, and it is becoming clear that it is having a significant effect. We see evidence of that effect almost daily in the “dig, disperse or run” dynamic that has emerged in this war. That all said, AI is here to stay. I suspect that cheap and many lower per level AI creating precision is a major way ahead. Interconnected AI empowered C4ISR backbones have been proven as decisive in linking target to shooters. When combined with AI empowered precision and C4 ISR we get a war where a nation that was military spending 1/10 of the nation that attacked it, stopped that attacker cold in their tracks, pushed them back and continues to hold them back. We are way past “hype”, the concept has been proven. Now we play scramble to try and figure out just how far this goes- is it just a flash, or a major shift. AI for predictive analytics, especially in the human space, is likely still over the next hill. AI that can assist in processing Petabytes of data and distilling them into targeting info; guide an explosive onto a target with 80-90% Pk rates, and; support kill chains/webs to a point that conventional mass concepts break - is already upon us. I have been hearing the “What RMA? For a long time now. The reality is that we have been in one since the late 80s. We are now just seeing major shifts that impact the fabric of warfare emerge. All those “failures” - and there were many- led directly to what we are seeing unfold on the ground in Ukraine. AI on the battlefield is hype…until isn’t, and becomes reality.

The US definition maybe. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. Illegal violence designed to induce “terror” in order to accomplish political ends, is not that far off. But just about every nation has its own version. I think we are asking: what does ISIS-K get out of this? Demonstration of an uncertainty. That uncertainty drives people in different directions. For some will push them towards the state to try and regain certainty. Others will see the hope in that uncertainty and support the sponsor of the terror action. A whole lot of terrorism is really just nasty theatre. Terrorism is a mechanism of a strategy of Intimidation and/or Subversion (but the Socialist Revolutionaries pre-1917 came damn close to pulling off Exhaustion.) It can be on the roadmap towards revolution and symmetric warfare, or it can simply be a bargaining position until enfranchisement is re-opened in a political process (see: IRA). And sometimes @ssholes just want stuff to burn. The trouble with ISIS has been that they are off the map with respect to nature of warfare. They are not political (or at least not enough). They are supernatural - God is at the wheel. How does one negotiate with that? The good news is that they are not homogeneous and have a lot of pragmatism in their leadership - despite the press. But at their heart, the narrative is pretty hard to deal with from a negotiation point of view. So in the end we cannot discount that ISIS-K is getting the good graces of God Almighty in all this and in doing His will, He will get their backs and give them a pure and holy Caliphate. A state where they won’t be sucking hind tit but driving the Rules Based International Order. So what? Well normally the game is to map, infiltrate and erode, while doing enough high profile smack jobs to make the news and keep the home front happy. I suspect Russia has a bigger problem than that on its hands. And we are less and less likely to want to help them out, at least publicly.

During the Cold War every terror group had some sort of affiliated, at differing ranges of course. Two can play at this game really..and they often did. Terrorism during the Cold War had the following strategic plays between the powers: - Blame Game - accuse the other team of supporting terrorism - Excuse Abuse - kinda what Russia is trying to play now..use attack or threat as a reason for X. - Claymore - keep pointed away from me and at them - Enemy of my enemy - weird one night stands - Intelligence collection - eyes and ears in strange nooks and crannies - Proxy foxy insurgency - rashes and sores in countries of opposing interest. Sometime they even went all the way if conditions were right. - Money! Yup sometimes they just made money together - Golden Oldies - subversive warfare, active measures and general f#ckery And we are headed right back to it…but now with Internet! The good news is that groups that got too out of control got clipped by both sides, which led to another play - Weird Buddy Roadtrip Comedy. This was when the superpowers actually cooperated to take out really crazy.

This is so frankly bafflingly short sighted and stupid…but of course it is Putin, the same strategist that came up with a quick invasion of Ukraine. US Intelligence - a nation whose weapons, ammo and data are actively killing Russian citizens - actually handed off actionable intel on this attack before it happened. What does this say? Well first off, US Intelligence has penetrated ISIS-K and was willing to risk assets in order to stop a terror attack…even against Russia. This demonstrates that the US was still willing to prioritize terrorism over its current beef with Russia, and was willing to take significant risks in doing so. Russia’s grand plan was to 1) ignore the intelligence, and then 2) poop all over the sponsor of said intel. The reality is that Russia’s pants are down in all this and its @ss is showing. The Stans are clearly hot and bothered at some level and ISIS-K is exploiting that. This is the tip of a much larger issue. So Putin’s grand plan is to burn any cooperation with the US…who are trying and solve his own problem. And then wire some ridonculous narrative about Ukrainian NAZIs now in league with Islamic extremism, all backed by the CIA. I am pretty sure those in Russia soft on this whole thing are not suddenly going to be galvanized by a cloudwork that Saddam’s ministry of propaganda could have done better on a cold start Tuesday. Putins is not a mastermind, he is plate spinning. At this point the world’s second largest nuclear power is being held together like a bad I Love Lucy skit. And no one even bother to try and pull the “poor westerner…you simply do not understand the Russian mindset” card…this was about as dumb a damage control play as could have been made. And no mystical Russian voodoo/goat hypnosis is going to change that.

This is basically at the point that anyone in Russia who actually believes this is going to believe whatever the Kremlin says anyway. The credibility of this sounds so hollow that I will be surprised if it shifts actual Russian sentiment in any real way. Further, this has risk of blowing up in Putin’s face: after two years of “victory” by the Russian army, Ukraine can now string together a ISIS-K/Tajik plot for a terror attack in Moscow? And worse, Russian intelligence and security failed to pick this threat up when it was coming out of a country they currently have in a choke hold?

I wouldn’t look much farther than - guys look close enough, beat confession and quickly close cases so Russian security does not look totally useless. The operators on this sort of mission are normally martyrs-in-waiting. They are not the best-of-the-best, quite the opposite, but they are hard believers and know they are very likely going to die. Being “contracted two weeks out” does not track at all for these sorts of attacks (see Bataclan etc). Small cells of radicalized locals or people who travelled to Moscow under the radar. So the confusion is not an IO/Psy-Op, it is just normal and very real confusion. Whether these guys actually did it will remain a question. But the whole thing was clearly an old school ISIL terror attack.

Wildly sending everything, all at once, would likely make things worse. Last thing UA needs are more diverse fleets that don’t have a logistics backbone. Heavy metal has had limited utility so send mountains of that - all taking up lane meters and weight, is counter productive. Ammo, definitely. Spare parts and key pieces of equipment. AD and anything that contributes to denial is a good start. The reality is that the UA could not absorb “all the guns”, so we need a well thought out and synchronized schedule that support Ukraine for the war they are in, and not the one we want them to be in. Most importantly, and we can manage risk almost everywhere else, is C4ISR support. Thankfully we do not have reports of the US/West walking back on the most important resource in this war…data. They do that to the point Russia can achieve targeting superiority and we are in serious trouble. This war is proving, repeatedly, that it is far better to know exactly where an opponent is at a given moment in space and time so that a single precision weapon can engage and kill than to try and sustain massive weights. I think this FPV production scale up is the right way to go. Mass precision beats everything.

Nothing wrong with these. Look pretty robust and well laid out. I assume well sighted. I think Russia is going to find out that minefields and trenches work both ways.

Actually China has been kinda standoffish on this whole thing. They talk “infinite friendship” but then back off on banking to avoid crossing the US too deeply. They are likely sending tech and even weapons but nowhere near levels they could. And they are taking Russia to the cleaners on oil and gas…with friends like these…. I think China wants a protracted conflict because it puts Russia in a very poor bargaining position. But at the same time they do not want Russia to collapse, or win really. As to China pouring arms and ammo into Russia…well they haven’t yet. Not sure if they see it really in their interest to bail Russia out. They want a weak and vulnerable Russia, but not a complete dumpster fire they have to deal with.