LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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3 hours ago, Beleg85 said:
Reportedly another Russian assault on Synkivka ending in predictable way.
“Through endurance we conquer", as Ernest Shackelton famously wrote. I bet Russian generals whisper something like that while posing their muscles before mirrors or presenting orders for another decoration.Perhaps it's earlier clip just shot from another drone. Level of casualties is still stunning, though.yes, this was seen previously. Better quality footage though.
PS: Speaking of better quality footage, How Hawt Is Ukraine Gonna Get? Part Trois.
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I've backed off posting a little cuz work, probably to the relief of some here.
But this piece, while not directly war related, is interesting, as China's ability to innovate, refine and mass-manufacture/export is a key megatrend to keep tracking soberly (i.e. without either exaggerating or dismissing):
https://tphuang.substack.com/p/ai-approach-differences-between-china
People often comment that China has turned to mature chip fabs as a result of October sanctions. I would say they always had plans to massively expand mature chip productions. The market for these “mature chips” in future AI controlled consumer electronics product and machines are enormous...
China is at the forefront of consumer electronics and robotics product, so its focus on LLMs are driven by how to make its consumer electronics and robotics product smarter. So, making hard tech better.
American tech companies are the leaders of search, e-commerce, social media and apps. So, its focus on LLMs are focused on how to make these soft tech products better...
As many have observed here, the Ukraine war already has the makings of a test-bed and laboratory for next generation miltech, much like the Spanish Civil War (albeit without the Condor Legion/Italian CTV).
PS: I'm not suggesting 'glorified autocomplete' (LLM) extrapolates directly to fully autonomous drones or slaughterdogs. But the general focus of Chinese industry on using AI programming to enhance the performance of physical devices was an interesting insight to me.
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4 hours ago, Joe982 said:
The Iranian embassy in Moscow would be an excellent target
Hitting 'symbolic' targets isn't terribly helpful at this point IMHO; they've already hit the Kremlin, for those to eyes to see.
****
By the way, in 2024, expect a flood of AI generated and highly realistic deepfakes on the interwebz, showing everything from hi res vids of Russian drone swarms slaughtering Leopard columns to Ukrainian units mutinying.
Stay alert out there BFC copains, in what is likely to be a very bad year for the world.
Your lies are more attractive than the truth
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6 hours ago, dan/california said:
Another set of footages of the same debacle.
Silent hunters.
Another UA solo 'tank raid'.
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10 hours ago, fry30 said:
Am I the only one who gets really confused when the dans start talking to each other?
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44 minutes ago, dan/california said:
We aren't going to know what is really happening in Congress until they have been back for a week or so. The number of people crossing the Southern border just keeps going up, so the Biden Administration has incentive to just give the Republicans what they want there. The border can be completely dysfunctional in a different way for while. Write/call your Congressperson.
Not just the US. I visited Toronto last summer and walked 5kms along Queen Street W after bar close late one night. People still out were overwhelmingly African/Haitian, like 8 to 1. Not menacing, and I do hope that remains the case, but a *lot* different from my last visit in 2012.
Sorry for OT.
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6 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/27/biden-endgame-ukraine-00133211
Biden admin getting ready to bail?
For some strange definition of 'bail', perhaps, because that isn't what this article says at all.
...That said, if the below reporting is anywhere close to reality, the Ukrainians are having serious manpower problems which may well be part of why the Western backers are managing expectations down.
Ukraine Military Recruiters Use Harsh Tactics to Fill Ranks (NYT, Dec 2023)
While some believe that high casualty numbers are partially to blame for aggressive conscription tactics, others point to a different reason: many Ukrainian men have either fled or bribed their way out of the draft, leaving a shrinking pool of conscripts, some of whom are supposed to be exempt from mobilization.
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops.
The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
Those Ukrainian estimates (for August) are about 20% higher than I would have thought.
But if they are accurate, then while I don't see collapse or mutiny as serious prospects, I wonder whether the UA can keep fighting in the same way it has with increasingly undermanned, exhausted combat troops, even if it switches purely to deep zone defence and attriting LOCs/attack concentrations.
...troops who *may* also start being materially outgunned again in 2024 (define that how you will), whether because Western aid is ebbing, or because the Russians are sourcing more/less wastefully, or both.
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5 hours ago, Astrophel said:
I had a christmas dinner with a marine who is just back from parachute training in Arizona - because the weather is optimal for training apparently. I thought "why not parachute over the mines"??. I said it was a stupid question but I would love to know the answer?
The way I read your question was not suggesting an old fashioned paradrop, but rather: could steerable parachutes/ paragliders be a 'poor mans jetpack'? allowing commandos to silently cross minefields and other obstacles at night to neutralise the overwatch -- 'vertical infiltration' if you will. Assuming they didn't get spotted and shot down.
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1 hour ago, Lethaface said:
Cheers! A worthy toast
Indeed!
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1. War within a war.
2. Tactical action (short clips)
3. Hmm, volunteer for mine clearing?
Bonus
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21 minutes ago, Carolus said:
Regarding small arms on drones:
The copter types struggle with the recoil, but what about a fixed wing type?
This tech is what, 60 years old? (in its manned iteration)
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
I suspect what we continue to see is individual soldiers responsible for getting some, if not all, of their kit on their own. A variety of private companies supply this need, probably much of it coming from China. The MoD supplies weapons, helmets, body armor, and whatever else it can scrape together.
Just a thought and not very well formed, apologies, but it occurs to me that between this and the 'Dad, please volunteer cuz i need an Iphone' stuff, it seems there's a freebooting cultural reflex alive and well today in Russia.
Engaging opportunistically in piracy and raiding ('going viking'), or hiring out one's sword seasonally for pay, plus the chance of loot, is a common 'second profession' for men throughout human history.
In the modern West* though, we have largely redirected those risk-taking animal spirits towards making money more or less 'within the system'. But entrepreneurialism has never been a serious option for ordinary Russians.
* Violent gang activity and predation is generally kept within poor or immigrant communities; it tends to get aggressively suppressed when it goes outside.
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Latest comedy of errors. At some point these numerous catastrophic failures (which we do NOT see mirrored on the UA side) have got to sum to a force-wide loss of operating capability, offensive and defensive alike.
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2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
A single 500m line charge would be too heavy for any drone. It would take a team of drones to carry and place, which does not sound practical.
Now some sort of FAB system…
It could grip it by the husk!
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10 hours ago, Zeleban said:
Looks like Trump's opponents aren't giving up, and that's good news.
Bro, if you really want to drive this thread into the ditch once and for all, just keep on posting this stuff.
It's turtles all the way down, there is literally nothing you or anyone else is going to get out of pursuing this subtopic.
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6 hours ago, Sojourner said:
A pair of ragged claws?
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1 hour ago, dan/california said:
I am starting to hear creaking noises again....
https://russiapost.info/regions/majority
...After reading this list, I once again thanked fate that I was not born in Moscow and still had not lost touch with reality. Because if we take two thirds of the Russian population as the “Russian people,” then the “Russian people” have not lost any of this. Because they had none of it to begin with.
The last time they, the people, held dollars in their hands was 1997 – to amuse themselves, nothing more. They never went to theaters and did not notice how the best directors left Russia and left them, the people, with nothing.
****
There are 6.3 million refugees who, like Soroka, left Ukraine during the war and have not returned, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). More than half are women and a third are minors. According to a UNHCR survey last July, 18% of those displaced abroad wanted to return to Ukraine within the next three months and 62% when the necessary security and stability conditions are in place; the remaining 20% were inclined not to return.
When the Russian invasion began, Ukraine had 44 million inhabitants. In 2023, the number stands at 36 million, including the territories occupied by Russia. If the data is limited to the regions of unoccupied Ukraine, the figure drops to 32 million, a 38% decrease from 1991.
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12 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:
Back in the “mid 70s”. When, when some auto manufacturers were starting to install seat belt switch systems that would prevent starting the vehicle if the seat belt wasn’t assembled to complete the circuit, people would just splice the necessary wires in a loop to ensure starting. You could probably do the same. No system can be “Idiot-proofed” because idiots are so ingenious!. What humans can create, other humans can defeat!.
There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....
*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/
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59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Landing... yeah, choice of landing zone appears to be a major advantage to the jetpack. You could land (uncomfortably) in a wooded thicket with a jetpack, but not with a rotary blade copter.
So Steve, in spite of your best efforts, it seems CM: Space Lobsters of Doom© will -- yet again! -- frontrun military reality by about 2-3 years.
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7 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:
I guess Heinlein was pretty prescient when he came up with the mobile infantry concept.
Ha ha, you ninjaed me by like 30 seconds!!!!
(PS, it is WAY better in German)
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2 hours ago, Zeleban said:
Zaluzhny previously expressed the opinion that Ukraine needs to return to last year’s level of citizen mobilization.
However, Zelensky said at a press conference that another 500,000 mobilized Ukrainians are needed. This means that Ukraine's armed forces must increase by another third of their original strength.
This clearly contradicts Zaluzhny’s assertion that everything is normal and no special mobilization measures are needed.
Be that as it may, I can be guided by the mobilization of my youth acquaintances from Krivoy Rog. They have significant abilities to corrupt any government bodies. Even if these guys were drafted into the army, then everything is very, very bad. So far, fortunately, none of my friends have been drafted into the army
Can you link to some recent articles or documentation (even if they're in Ukrainian) on the details of civil mobilisation.... as in, how it's supposed to be working, how many people, etc?
...I don't need more gripefests or rumours about scoundrels buying their way out or running overseas. I don't doubt it's a problem but we have no way to scale it without an idea of what the nation is trying to achieve.
I totally agree that Ukraine should have had at least 500,000 more men and women enrolled in TD reserve units and trained up in rudimentary skills by last winter.
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1. Interesting thread by DavidD SecretSqrl on the Bradley (I'm not an armour grog and DavidD can be hit or miss, but he does seem to have a fair amount of hands on US Army experience with Brads).
2. For what it's worth, comments by a German expert.
Nico Lange noted that many forget that 95% of the equipment donated by Ukraine's partners had not been used during the counteroffensive....
Ukrainians continue to bet on exhaustion. "They are no longer trying to hold positions like they did in Bakhmut. Instead, they want to slow down the Russian troops and let them bleed."
"Ukraine is probably gathering resources for a new counteroffensive next year," Lange said. One of their starting points could be the bridgehead in Kherson. With the necessary fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, Ukraine could adequately support the advance of its troops, especially since there are almost no Russian fortifications in this region.
I doubt that last remark on fortifications, but I heartily agree that the far left end of the Russian advance is a good place to strike, if only to force them to deplete their mobile forces responding. Not with mech though; mech is pretty much roadbound down here.
btw, there's a lot of hand wringing about the Russian air delivered heavy glide bombs hitting the Krynki bridgehead with 'impunity'. While I'd hate to be under these things, I look at that a little more glass half full; the Russians don't have enough artillery so they're forced to hunt an ant invasion using a sledgehammer.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by LongLeftFlank
Farewell to all that Arsenal of Democracy chest-pounding, I'm afraid, gents. Western military power has always been 'firstest with the mostest' since at latest Lepanto. But we now stand on the threshold of profound change, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
...While the West retains a large edge in innovating tech cuz "our Freedomz", it's the Chinese manufacturing behemoth that can flood the planet with cut-price fit-for-purpose knockoffs of anything you can hit with a stick, long before our 'shareholder value' guys can even roll out the first generation.
Their capacity -- including sophisticated supply chains -- is now an order of magnitude beyond the West's remaining heavy manufacturing centres in Korea, Germany and US-Mexico. The ramp rates are mind boggling now. And as with cars, batteries and wind turbines, so with miltech.
The Chinese state also can, and will, keep surplus heavy industrial capacity on the shelf for decades. Short of buying off China Inc. to supply our team instead, I just don't see how this changes.
Rebuttal?
@Butschi, @poesel, anyone?