LongLeftFlank

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/marines-test-fire-robot-dog-armed-with-rocket-launcher Note this video doesn't actually show the 'goat' walking around with, aiming or firing a LAWS strapped to it. Note! the underlying quadrupedal robot is a Chinese-made Unitree Go1, which is readily available for purchase online, including through Amazon. Unitree's website offers the baseline Go1 Air for $2,700 and the Go1 Pro, which it says has more capable sensors that it uses for general movement and object recognition, for $3,500. So here yet again, we see that while the West can innovate, it's the Chinese who scale.

Red team anecdata "Consolidated companies".

The prior discussion was about censorship of unpleasant or triggering or wev views in the West, which some folks here seemed to think was a good idea so long as it aligned with their own views. ...But if i misrepresented your own views on the subject, I apologise. Anyhoo, back to the war.

It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So. (misattributed to Twain) And no, this isn't advocating antivaxx. ...But the moment you or any other right thinker gets put in charge of defining The Truth and suppressing Falsehood, it's only a matter of time before you start legislating your own prejudices and falsehoods from the bench as well. Nobody is wise enough to know the boundary. That's why we Westerners try to leave as much as possible up to individual conscience and choice, in spite of the many inefficiencies and risks that inhere in that.

Quod custodiet ipsos custodes?

I don't know the first thing about any of that, so I'm just going to do my LLF thing and good naturedly meme you.

Sorry, 'solving the problem of information security' as in imposing censorship? The Committee for Public Safety? The House Un-American Activities Committee? Look, Russia does what it can, no doubt (and mainly without effect), but the troubles of the West are overwhelmingly of our own making, and not within Putin's or Xi's control. P.S. And not to drag this thread back into the pointless swamp of politics, but IMHO, the A Number One on the list of 'troubles of the West overwhelmingly of our own making' is that it is only China that is able to do sh*t like this today: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/23/solar-module-prices-may-reach-0-10-w-by-end-2024/ Last project I contracted out, it was USD 26 cents, and that was record beating low! And that after huge plant fires and a polysilicon shortage. Say what you like about China guys, and I've been a China cynic for years. But that is pure Godzilla-sized scale economy in action.... Arsenal of Democracy level mojo, without the Democracy part. Now just take out solar modules and put in 'cheap FPV drones'. Then see if you don't feel an uncomfortable feeling in your guts.

But in this grim new 1917 paradigm of static warfare, isn't that mobik simply a 'useless eater' until he becomes a drone target, once the Ukrainians stop trying to take his hole? ...what I was thinking about earlier was the likely next wave of micro-antipersonnel weapons -- part mine, part drone, part robot dog, part sentry gun, part Furby, part whatever -- that make those meat assaults dead letters before they even finish climbing out of their holes.

Well sure, so long as there are prosperous nations willing to take in Ukrainian exiles as metics, then a lot of them will make that choice. I suppose that's part of what Putin is counting on, although I have no idea who is going to settle the empty lands: Chechens maybe? If not, they need to fight and bleed for their homeland, or else accept that they and their compatriots will once more become thralls of the Muscovites. BTW, Western nations looking for a source of blonde white immigrants (as an alternative to, umm, immigrants who don't look like that) is a standard tankie meme, a cynical variant on 'fighting to the last Ukrainian'. There is some precedent though. The French did quite well out of the revolutions of the mid-19th century, bringing in waves of Austro-Hungarian and Italian revolutionaries who rapidly Gallicised. The anticommunist Polish exiles of WW2 rapidly became British, etc.

Very important article, do not miss it.

I am not going to overreact to our good friend @Zeleban's anecdata at the moment, although I do sympathise with the pressure he and the Ukrainian nation is under while we sit in peace and comfort. Perhaps other Ukrainian threaders might chime in here? That said, there are disturbing signs that the war is likely to become much more deadly for Ukrainian infantry in the field this winter, absent effective counters to the growing Russian drone threat. For example.... And please, can we take a pass on the kneejerk 'surebutthemobikshaveitfarworse' whataboutism. Until enough mobiks actually quit or mutiny over the 'far worse', it's cold comfort to the Ukrainian guys. ....Anyhow, it seems impossible that the Ukrainian nation can keep letting its already weary volunteer force continue doing the bleeding while able-bodied young men go about their peacetime business, or live as refugees abroad. If that is indeed what is happening, which I'm not totally sure of tbh. (more anecdata though: I recently I had a Linkedin friend trying to find a 30 year old Ukrainian engineer a job in Canada and I was tempted to ask why he wasn't at home serving his country?)

If we built this large wooden badger.... https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=48441 'General Maus' is quite an old problem, alongside 'General Mud' and 'General Winter.'

Well of course, conservative capitalists like their plumbers and other 'buttcrack' service providers and offshore labour to be hard working, goal-oriented, cheerful, not-too-expensive and if possible, white. Them O'rentals got too dam' uppity....

Dependensia by any other name would smell as sweet.

You tell me what you are first, if you're so interested. Actually, don't, the label game is boring and OT and interminable. Nobody cares.

Umm, I don't know your lived experience, but mine teaches me that no sector of society -- any society -- is any more or less emotional and gullible than any other, overall. Other than the benevolent, wise and rational philosopher rulers *I* voted for, of course. (Assuming I had in fact voted in the last 30 years)

Fair enough, and I'm happy to drop it, but forgive me if I don't rush for the smelling salts.

Res ipse loquitur, sorry. Again, I'm willing to believe he hasn't changed his spots, but this is all hearsay.

Thanks, but not recent enough. I want to hear in his own words -- and since the war began -- not filtered through the lens of people who hate his guts for other reasons. **** I mean, most people here know that I identify as 'conservative' (albeit that probably doesn't mean what you might think it does), and I utterly fail to see why any 'conservative' would favour Putin's insane delusions of Russian Manifest Destiny, or his decaying mafia petrostate, over the vigorous, hybrid and above all recognisably European society of stubbornn brilliant improvisers and tinkerers that Ukraine has turned out to be. ....It's as though the French crown were to look at the American Patriots after 1779 and say, you know what, you've done surprisingly well, annihilating Burgoyne's army and denying the redcoats the hinterlands and all that, huzzah for you. But you know those long campaigns in New Jersey and the Carolinas really didn't go as well as we all hoped, plus Rochambeau lost a lot of kit up in Providence. So isn't it time you stopped wasting blood and treasure and sued for peace now? Hey, maybe King George will grant you 'those rights of Englishmen' that still looked good back in 1775.

I don't disbelieve you, and my interest in politics is limited (and arguing it here is fairly pointless and neverending), but could you perhaps provide a substantive Wilders quote on Ukraine later than 2014, and preferably later than Feb 2022?

This is about more than F16s. Thread, with some useful comments: https://nitter.net/Tatarigami_UA/status/1726666114124403025#m

Corroboration? (I don't know the source)

Ah, remember the good old times when we would be quipping about Ivans crapping their pants when they glimpsed one of these beauties? 2. I have no idea what it detects but evidently it ain't gonna be doing that no mo' More here: https://nitter.net/HamWa07/status/1727057429152649360#m 3. This is just as advertised, a 'day in the life', several long GoPro sequences, unedited. No 'dramatic' action takes place; the section doesn't leave their trenches until they remount at the end and never see the enemy (he's in grenade range at one point), but guys do get wounded (female medic). Skip to daylight at 2:30 or so.

On the main topic, I believe control of Kinburn spit and the lands south and east of there (to Oleshki/Oleshki sands, preferably) is the single most valuable chunk of additional real estate for Ukraine to take back prior to contemplating any cease fire. And it just happens to be the hardest bit for the Russians to sustain and defend. This is a very unique battlespace, and it seems to me that Ukraine holds all the cards here. If Ivan is determined to hold here, the Ukies can beat the ever living hell out of him all winter and through the spring, with great economy of force. Also.... Translation: Following the digitalization of the route of the Dnieper in November 2023 (according to Sentinel-2 images), I found a German map from 1942 where we can notice that the river has today returned to its initial route. The marshier the better!