photon

So, what ever happened to the Russian helicopters? During the summer Ukrainian push it looked like the KA-52s were effective at their intended job of breaking up a mechanized breach, and the UAF was targeting them on the ground. Have they been withdrawn? Blown up? No longer necessary? Tac helicopters seem like another system that's ripe for disruption by cheap powerful compute at the edge.

So, what ever happened to the Russian helicopters? During the summer Ukrainian push it looked like the KA-52s were effective at their intended job of breaking up a mechanized breach, and the UAF was targeting them on the ground. Have they been withdrawn? Blown up? No longer necessary? Tac helicopters seem like another system that's ripe for disruption by cheap powerful compute at the edge.

So, what ever happened to the Russian helicopters? During the summer Ukrainian push it looked like the KA-52s were effective at their intended job of breaking up a mechanized breach, and the UAF was targeting them on the ground. Have they been withdrawn? Blown up? No longer necessary? Tac helicopters seem like another system that's ripe for disruption by cheap powerful compute at the edge.

This is almost the combination the USN settled on against the kamikaze threat. Radar guided CAP at long range, proximity fused semi-automatic dual purpose 5" guns firing explosive shells at medium range for anything that eluded the CAP, 40mm automatic wing choppers at short range for anything that eluded the flak barrage. Scale everything down by a factor of 10 and you've got what you're proposing.
But the key to the whole thing was having a metric asspile of semi-disposable ships because some percentage of the attacks will get through and if that degrades your combat power too much you're in real trouble. We used DD picket sponges (we had approximately infinity destroyers at that point), an inner cordon of battleships (that could no longer project useful combat power, but could throw up walls of flak), and an inner-inner core of very vulnerable very cheap carriers mixed with less vulnerable big expensive carriers.
But the real key to naval operational maneuver was the Big Blue Blanket (tm). If you systematically suppress all the launch sites, then everything else is just backup. What does that look like in land warfare? I have no idea. There are too many launch sites, because the launch site is anywhere.
I could see a heavily armored legacy mech formation (hopefully with some sort of unmanned drive; we lost a lot of men in the picket destroyers) working like a drone-atgm sponge while other systems apply combat power to degrade the enemy operational system?

This is almost the combination the USN settled on against the kamikaze threat. Radar guided CAP at long range, proximity fused semi-automatic dual purpose 5" guns firing explosive shells at medium range for anything that eluded the CAP, 40mm automatic wing choppers at short range for anything that eluded the flak barrage. Scale everything down by a factor of 10 and you've got what you're proposing.
But the key to the whole thing was having a metric asspile of semi-disposable ships because some percentage of the attacks will get through and if that degrades your combat power too much you're in real trouble. We used DD picket sponges (we had approximately infinity destroyers at that point), an inner cordon of battleships (that could no longer project useful combat power, but could throw up walls of flak), and an inner-inner core of very vulnerable very cheap carriers mixed with less vulnerable big expensive carriers.
But the real key to naval operational maneuver was the Big Blue Blanket (tm). If you systematically suppress all the launch sites, then everything else is just backup. What does that look like in land warfare? I have no idea. There are too many launch sites, because the launch site is anywhere.
I could see a heavily armored legacy mech formation (hopefully with some sort of unmanned drive; we lost a lot of men in the picket destroyers) working like a drone-atgm sponge while other systems apply combat power to degrade the enemy operational system?

This is almost the combination the USN settled on against the kamikaze threat. Radar guided CAP at long range, proximity fused semi-automatic dual purpose 5" guns firing explosive shells at medium range for anything that eluded the CAP, 40mm automatic wing choppers at short range for anything that eluded the flak barrage. Scale everything down by a factor of 10 and you've got what you're proposing.
But the key to the whole thing was having a metric asspile of semi-disposable ships because some percentage of the attacks will get through and if that degrades your combat power too much you're in real trouble. We used DD picket sponges (we had approximately infinity destroyers at that point), an inner cordon of battleships (that could no longer project useful combat power, but could throw up walls of flak), and an inner-inner core of very vulnerable very cheap carriers mixed with less vulnerable big expensive carriers.
But the real key to naval operational maneuver was the Big Blue Blanket (tm). If you systematically suppress all the launch sites, then everything else is just backup. What does that look like in land warfare? I have no idea. There are too many launch sites, because the launch site is anywhere.
I could see a heavily armored legacy mech formation (hopefully with some sort of unmanned drive; we lost a lot of men in the picket destroyers) working like a drone-atgm sponge while other systems apply combat power to degrade the enemy operational system?

This is almost the combination the USN settled on against the kamikaze threat. Radar guided CAP at long range, proximity fused semi-automatic dual purpose 5" guns firing explosive shells at medium range for anything that eluded the CAP, 40mm automatic wing choppers at short range for anything that eluded the flak barrage. Scale everything down by a factor of 10 and you've got what you're proposing.
But the key to the whole thing was having a metric asspile of semi-disposable ships because some percentage of the attacks will get through and if that degrades your combat power too much you're in real trouble. We used DD picket sponges (we had approximately infinity destroyers at that point), an inner cordon of battleships (that could no longer project useful combat power, but could throw up walls of flak), and an inner-inner core of very vulnerable very cheap carriers mixed with less vulnerable big expensive carriers.
But the real key to naval operational maneuver was the Big Blue Blanket (tm). If you systematically suppress all the launch sites, then everything else is just backup. What does that look like in land warfare? I have no idea. There are too many launch sites, because the launch site is anywhere.
I could see a heavily armored legacy mech formation (hopefully with some sort of unmanned drive; we lost a lot of men in the picket destroyers) working like a drone-atgm sponge while other systems apply combat power to degrade the enemy operational system?

Not, perhaps, at all germaine to our present discussion here, but the story of the USS Borie's battle with U-405 is fantastic. It's about as close to crossed swords as you can get in the era of modern weapons. Morison reports that the crew of the Borie kept the Germans from their flak guns by, among other things, throwing knives and spent 5" shell casings at them and knocking them off of the sub.

Not, perhaps, at all germaine to our present discussion here, but the story of the USS Borie's battle with U-405 is fantastic. It's about as close to crossed swords as you can get in the era of modern weapons. Morison reports that the crew of the Borie kept the Germans from their flak guns by, among other things, throwing knives and spent 5" shell casings at them and knocking them off of the sub.

Not, perhaps, at all germaine to our present discussion here, but the story of the USS Borie's battle with U-405 is fantastic. It's about as close to crossed swords as you can get in the era of modern weapons. Morison reports that the crew of the Borie kept the Germans from their flak guns by, among other things, throwing knives and spent 5" shell casings at them and knocking them off of the sub.

Not a US Army master sergeant, but an Imperial Japanese officer in 1943 or 1944? Totally. The parallels are worrying for threading the needle of defeat-without-total-collapse. It takes a lot to shake a society to its senses once it's decided that glorious death is as good as victory.

Not a US Army master sergeant, but an Imperial Japanese officer in 1943 or 1944? Totally. The parallels are worrying for threading the needle of defeat-without-total-collapse. It takes a lot to shake a society to its senses once it's decided that glorious death is as good as victory.

Unless you build it far in the west where one can protect it, or in another country.  It is not like the Russians can see and hit every industrial site in Ukraine, if they could then they would have done it.  The best location is in the southwest, in the mountains near the Romanian/Hungarian border - but that is without knowing about Ukrainian infrastructure in that area:

1000ish km and tough to hit if you dig it in.  But it will of course cost.

Ok - I think I found the source of the chart: 
It looks like those numbers are not dollar values, but "transaction records" whatever that means.

Ok, well really hard to tell what that really means.  Could be military socks for all we know - and don't turn a nose up at that one, good socks are a lifesaver in this business.
Regardless, we know Russia has started pulling and China has jumped in to an extent.  What we are not seeing are high end Chinese military platforms or systems on the battlefield.  I encourage anyone interested to take a look at what China is really producing - https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02
If the high end stuff was getting shipped we would be seeing Chinese HIMARs show up in force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHL-03  That plugged into Chinese ISR support could make this war so much worse - the other side of the proxy escalation ladder.

Another question I don't know the answer to. The consensus of the Thread so far has been that a NATO imposed no-fly-zone poses unacceptable escalatory risks (because it would involve NATO assets shooting down Russian planes). Does that escalatory logic hold now that essentially all (all?) of the Russian incursions into Ukranian airspace are unamanned? Is there strategic room for a more nuanced ruleset - something like, "We, NATO, will shoot down all unmanned aerial objects that are within 10km of a large conurbation or civilian infrastructure target west of the Dniper?

My initial reaction was "nope".  But the US did pretty much this in and over Israel last week so there definitely has been a precedence set.  I think the major hurdle if positioning western troops on Ukrainian soil during the war to make this happen.  To my mind this a western escalatory threat ladder rung.  We could essentially declare a no-fly west of the Dniper but Russia is going 1) take this as a major escalation signal, and 2) milk it for all its worth to drive domestic support for this war upward.  This could easily creep off-mission if manned Russian A/C start upping operations - we have to let them bomb Ukrainian civilians but shoot down the unmanned only.
I think if we are going to call "no fly" we need to mean it and make damned sure we are justified in taking this next step.  We are talking about global powers no longer prosecuting by proxy as we would be targeting Russian assets directly.  Then if we make the call, do not be half @ssing it - just declare "no fly" like we did for Saddam and Gadhafi.
Interestingly, the US president does not need blessing from congress for this as Commander-in-Chief.  This would be a US military operation comin gout of in-year operations funding.  I am betting it is an option on a whiteboard somewhere, but no one seems willing to take it just yet. 

My thinking is that your scenario would require at least some NATO troops and equipment on the ground in Ukraine, and therefore a pretty big escalatory risk. Whether that risk is really large is in the eye of the beholder, and Russia could make quite a propaganda blitz out of NATO soldiers in Ukraine.
Dave

Another question I don't know the answer to. The consensus of the Thread so far has been that a NATO imposed no-fly-zone poses unacceptable escalatory risks (because it would involve NATO assets shooting down Russian planes). Does that escalatory logic hold now that essentially all (all?) of the Russian incursions into Ukranian airspace are unamanned? Is there strategic room for a more nuanced ruleset - something like, "We, NATO, will shoot down all unmanned aerial objects that are within 10km of a large conurbation or civilian infrastructure target west of the Dniper?

World War II at sea was a race to understand a similar shift. In the span of a few years we went from measuring naval power projection in "weight of battle line broadside" to "size of modern air wing". Heavy surface ships survived inasmuch as they were able to be useful to the air wing projection assets, which was mediumly, and then not so much.
That transition happened in less than a decade.

World War II at sea was a race to understand a similar shift. In the span of a few years we went from measuring naval power projection in "weight of battle line broadside" to "size of modern air wing". Heavy surface ships survived inasmuch as they were able to be useful to the air wing projection assets, which was mediumly, and then not so much.
That transition happened in less than a decade.

And just to give a sense of how early we are in this iteration of warfare, my great-great-grandfather witnessed the early use of proto machine guns at the Battle of Gaines Mill more than 150 years ago. Imagine where drones will be in 30. 

I read the doc and RUSI actually hits some pretty salient points.  The mainstream thinking is that unmanned systems as we are talking about here are an addition to conventional warfare.  An emerging capability to be added to our extant capability portfolios and expenditures. Unmanned systems are an undeniably part of the future warfare military algorithms and focus should be on how to combine them best within our current approaches to create advantages.
I think this does not go far enough.  I believe that unmanned autonomous systems will emerge as the core pillar of a future military operational system.  We will then build the remaining systems, some legacy others also new, around these new unmanned capabilities.  We will fund and equip the unmanned forces first, along with C4ISR and PGM strike.  We will then need to figure out from the money left what to resources with respect to heavier conventional manned systems.  This takes the entire approach to force development and generation and flips it. More plainly, tanks will survive if they can demonstrate that they can shape, support and/or exploit the main unmanned battle…not the other way around as RUSI and others suggest.
This era we are in reminds me of the introduction of machine guns. Militaries of the day immediately brigaded them like cannons and relegated them to a support-to-infantry role.  The reality is that within a few short years the role of infantry was to protect the machine guns while they exerted firepower effect, and then the infantry would exploit that effect by taking and holding ground…so they could move up the machine guns.

This is such a weird take to me as to be somewhat incomprehensible. Like, we seem to be operating in different factual universes. Italians bogged down in Albania? How is that an apt comparison?
What particular weapons systems are we depleting the reserves of? We've been culpably stingy with our second and third tier weapon systems. Your points contradicts one another. If China is learning to fight a western military that doesn't use any of its airforce, any of its modern deep strike capability, any of its naval capability, any of its modernized mech force... learn on, I guess?
On the contrary, everyone is learning that the shape of the battlefield has changed, and changed in ways that seriously favor the defender. The PLAN has to be looking at the videos of the SeaBaby double taps and thinking hard about what their losses crossing the Taiwan strait would look like.
Everybody is looking at the rise of low-energy precision fires and wondering how totally that's broken mechanized mass.
Everybody is looking at the totally illuminated battlefield and wondering how complete their ground-to-space ISR system is.

This is how it’s done. Respectful, illuminating and useful. Thanks, lads.