TheVulture

Intriguing report of the British MoD successfully testing an anti-drone laser system - called DragonFire, because the MoD is the best at chosing names for weapon systems - that is quoted at cost around £10 per shot with a 7 mile range. Although obviously there are questions about how close to reality those claims are and how well it would translate to battlefield conditions in practice. Could be battefield ready "in 5 years".
Paywalled article from the Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/laser-weapon-aerial-target-porton-down-xzzwn00ls
Free to view archived version: https://archive.is/ArNai
 

I'm not a big graphics nerd, but I'd love to see Bradley rounds hitting a T-90 looking like that in Combat Mission.  But it's the kind of thing big budget games have a team of programmers and artists working on for 6 months straight and still can't get it looking right. 

Just saw a pic of the abandoned T-90M
In CM's language, it is:
Optics: X
CITV: X
Weapon control: X
Main Gun : X
 
 
the two bright flash in the video are the smoke grenades discharged from the launcher. So all the smoke grenades are gone too. And from the pic the smoke launchers seem to be taken a badly damages.
 

I'm not a big graphics nerd, but I'd love to see Bradley rounds hitting a T-90 looking like that in Combat Mission.  But it's the kind of thing big budget games have a team of programmers and artists working on for 6 months straight and still can't get it looking right. 

As far as I know most revolutions and uprisings have one or more underground/resistance/rebel - groups that do have a decent "organisational structure" with active planning and communication. Sometimes they're small in size (Nazi-Germany), sometimes huge (Afghanistan).  Some are only strong in a country's rebellious area's (Yemen), while others can be found almost throughout the entire country. (Vietnam, Algeria 1950's).
Those organisations usually make plans for what to do, and how to act, when the opportunity for "the revolution" arises.
They're all a bit like embers in a dying fire. Waiting.. but as soon as a new piece of wood is thrown upon those embers the flames suddenly come back to life.
The Prigozhin-revolt was not one log into the fire, but an effin busload of logs! Even in Russia most people, and certainly any "revolutionaries" must have realized that something big was going on. I think the storming of the Bastille in France may have been less huge in every aspect (except for the final result, that is).
But I haven't heard of ANY streetfighting ANYWHERE in Russia, because revolutionary groups took their chance. Nowhere, as far as i know, were huge demonstrations reported. No attacks on governemental institutions, no riots, no protests, not even minor disturbances, no cheering crowds. Not the least bit of chaos! Such a huge country, but nowhere any noticable support for, what after a few hours was stunningly obvious for even the stupidest of onlookers, an uprising on the way without any opposition!
But nothing but silence..
And that for me indicates that we will not see a people's uprising in Russia. Maybe someone close to Putin succeeds in killing him, or maybe he falls terminally ill, but I cannot see a second "storming of the winterpalace".

I'm not a fan of our UK government, but I am a fan of their support for Ukraine and I don't think there's any call in the country for that to change.  For example see PM Sunak's speech today in Parliament, and the agreement of the opposition leader Starmer.  They both mentioned a hope that renewed UK support will become a model for other countries...

Haiduk, I have so much respect for you because you are always balanced in your opinion and share even horrible videos showing your countrymen getting killed, no matter how bad it must feel. That's very unique. I hope the best for you and your country.

It's just an exercise scenario.
Bild has blown it out of proportions by misrepresenting it as some sort of battle plan or expected threat.

I am really tired of the idea that there is a mysterious cabal of crypto hawks who somehow have the power to influence defense decisions in dozens of countries around the world and are dedicated to ensuring the war in Ukraine never ends. If anything, people in democratic countries have shown time and again that they do not want war, and even when a war does spark off, they certainly don't want long ones. War is not popular with the people. No politicians are running on a platform of "let's keep everyone at war". On the contrary!
Obviously not all decisions made by the government are communicated in detail to the people, but the whole point of democracy is that there is freedom of debate and eventual transparency. There are plenty of anti-war politicians around the world who have an interest in exposing a forever war conspiracy, and yet no evidence has been exposed. So why keep suggesting it exists?
It's true that a handful of actors here and there have an interest in dragging wars out for economic reasons, or believe it might be advantageous for geopolitical reasons, but they are far from "the ones in charge", and their position is not widely popular. On the other hand, we have plenty of evidence that warfare has changed in a way that it is no longer easy to deal out crushing victories against near-peer adversaries. Perhaps it never was.

So put a pin in tac nuclear - found this site on the web:
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/  (things have come a long way since the old Radiac Wheel)
I plugged in a 50kt yield (which is pretty much the high end of tac nuclear) at Avdiivka:


So basically we are looking at a 800m hole blown into a defensive line...maybe.  Dug in troops are very hard to kill and even a surface burst is going to have  a pretty modest crater.  From tests with the B61 for bunkers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb#:~:text=A 50-kiloton yield detonating,within the circular error probability.
"A 50-kiloton yield detonating on the ground produces a crater with a radius of 30–68 meters, depending on the density of the surface, effectively putting the bunker within the circular error probability.[49]"
So it might clear a lane in the first minefield but do nothing for the next one.
So what?  Well tac nukes are not a magic wand that erases defending forces or systems.  They were actually designed to break up heavy formations on the move.   To break a determined defence Russia would not be using a single tactical nuclear weapon, they would need to use many in depth.  For example to blow a 5km line in depth, they would likely need 6-10 nuclear weapons.  And that is only for 5kms.  The strategic risks of Russia firing off 6-10 tac nukes at 50kt each are not small in the least.  And even then a full breakout might not work.
Then the uncomfortable question of "break out to where?" Solvyanks always looked like the major operational objective - a lot of rail and roads.  It is 70km from Avdiivka - that is one long push in this war.  UA reserve forces would be all over that advance and western C4ISR would light it up from space.  So Putin crosses the nuclear threshold in a major way and blows a 1 x 5 km hole in the UA line.  Pushes what is left of his mech forces to try and exploit 70km deep - which is a pretty long extension for the RA right now.  The remaining 65km are likely to be an FPV and HIMARs hell on earth.
And then they take Slovyanks...then what?  Well looking at the map the strategic objective that makes the most sense is Poltava because it would slice the Southeastern UA front in half and separate Dnipro from Kharkiv. That is around 230km...in this war?  I mean unless the UA completely collapses, and 10 tac nukes aren't going to do that, the RA risks creating and overstretched salient.  Which is a steep price to pay for the strategic blowback.
In summary, tac nukes likely will not work.  And the cost/risk of their use far outweigh the payoff on an RA offensive.  I would rate this one as LOW likelihood and frankly MODERATE threat as far as COAs go. 

It sounds a bit like the ideas behind tactical nukes, but without the massive expense, radiological contamination and political blowback. Replace one big bomb with a thousand highly personalised ones.

It sounds a bit like the ideas behind tactical nukes, but without the massive expense, radiological contamination and political blowback. Replace one big bomb with a thousand highly personalised ones.

It sounds a bit like the ideas behind tactical nukes, but without the massive expense, radiological contamination and political blowback. Replace one big bomb with a thousand highly personalised ones.

I don’t know:
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/contentious-us-china-trade-relationship
3/4 of a trillion annually is still a pretty big number.  Uncoupling that is going to take time and likely hurt - we are losing our minds on inflation right now.  What is moving away from cheaper Chinese manufacturing going to look like.
As to “unmaking”, well the problem with making something human-wise is that it becomes self-aware and starts making plans (and friends):
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-trade-development-with-brics-analysis-and-opportunities/
I am not in the “China = easy day” camp.  We waited too long and got too greedy.  So now comes the hard part.

You are clearly either delusional or this is just a deliberate campaign of mis- information - I'll be blocking you going forwards .

Ok so let's end all this horsesh#t.  The great thing about the US is that they put everything out to the public.  No other nation on earth is as transparent.  So here is what Miller actually said:
https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-4-2024/
First as to "no more money"
"QUESTION: Thank you. Let’s discuss Ukraine a little bit. How long will the latest package that you guys have sent already in December will give operations until they run out of funding again?
MR MILLER: I will let Ukraine speak to that because that pertains to – and my colleagues at the Pentagon may have some additional insight to offer on this. But ultimately, that’s a question to Ukraine to speak to because it goes to their rate of expenditure and other really military questions.
But I will say that we do need Congress to act. We are out of funding here. We know that we need to continue to support Ukraine. They need – they rely on this assistance. They rely on it to continue to fight what is a brutal Russian assault that continues, even over the – that continues every day. And so it’s important for Congress to act to continue to fund this democracy that is continuing to defend itself."
That is all about pushing Congress to act.  Inside DC baseball, not a US intent to cut off all funding.
As to current state of the war:
"QUESTION: And would you say that, given the latest developments, that the war is turning in Russia’s favor?
MR MILLER: No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I think people forget oftentimes the actual stakes of this war and what Vladimir Putin’s actual goal was, and what Ukraine has actually achieved and what it continues to achieve. Remember that Putin launched this as a war of total conquest where he wanted to take over Ukraine. He wanted to throw the government out of power. He wanted to subsume Ukraine inside Russia. Not only was Ukraine able to prevent that from happening, which everyone sort of takes for granted now but it was very not – it was very much not a settled question at the start of this war – they have managed to retake around half of the territory that Russia seized in the opening weeks of the war.
And even in the past few weeks, they continue to make battlefield gains. Remember the – over the last summer we were talking about the difficulty when Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and it looked like Ukraine wasn’t going to be able to continue to export grain. Well, because of advances that Ukraine made to open a Black Sea lane and expel the Russian fleet from certain parts of the Black Sea, they are now able to continue to export grain, which is critical to their economy.
So there are going to be battlefield developments back and forth, where you see each side gaining or losing territory. But when you look at the ultimate stakes of this war, it’s quite clear that Ukraine is going to exit this war independent, strong, with an improved economy, and looking west when what Russia wanted at the outset was not just a Ukraine that was looking east but Ukraine that was actually part of Russia."
Boy this sounds familiar...because some on this thread have been saying it all along.
And as to the statement that has some people running around like the panicky idiot in a bad plane crash movie:
"QUESTION: As long as it takes?
MR MILLER: As long as it takes. That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023. We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine – to use the language that you repeated back – to stand on its own feet and to help Ukraine build its own industrial base and its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own. But we are not there yet, and that is why it is so critical that Congress pass the supplemental funding bill, because we are not yet at the point where Ukraine can defend itself just based on its own. And it’s why that it continues to be important for Congress to support Ukraine and continues to be important for our European allies and others throughout the world to support Ukraine."
From a State Dept talking head no less.
Oh, ya that totally says that "Ukraine is totally cut off and will have to build its own tanks from here on out."  You know we should totally freak out now and point to every Russian leg twitch as a major victory, while screaming "Ukraine is doomed!!" From the heights of the thread.
So "yes" I am saying the US will backstop a Ukrainian MIC as it plans for a transition away from tactical handouts to long term strategic sustainment...just like they did in South Korea.  But hey you wanna be "soundbite panic guy" on the thread, go right ahead.  
 

just wrong.  maybe not the effect you are looking for but i don't think you really understand how sanctions work.

In a CM battle though you are implicitly in a situation where chucking a Tunguska in the area is reasonable, and the impact of cost exchange ratios doesn't matter because the battle is its own self contained world.
In Ukraine on the other hand, rather than a single $35k reaper, you've got dozens of tiny quad copter drones, an operational system that has spent the last 18 months figuring out how to integrate them in to the kill chain,  and a Tunguska that close to the front is going to quickly wind up as an expensive and hard to replace scrap metal sculpture installation.
A Tunguska *could* shoot down some quad copters, although not as easily as a Raven, but you're going to run out of Tunguskas very quickly if you send them all to do short range air defence close to the line of contact. 

Merry Christmas to all folks- in first place, to Ukrainian defenders. AFU gave nice gift.
 

The most recent incidents with which I was involved was just before I retired from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was a program called “Suspected Unapproved Parts”. “A.K.A. counterfeit parts that were being sold to U.S. Air Carriers. It involved parts from non-Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that U.S. Air Carriers purchased to maintain their fleets. This was a problem that extended across basically all major airframe and engine manufacturers products in service, and throughout most, if not all, Air Carriers in the world. The incidents that really kicked off the program were reports of incidents in engine turbine discs reported by Lufthansa.
Do you all really think the manufacturers of the SUPs have gone out of business in the last seven years? I sincerely hope they have, but I kinda effing doubt it. I was involved in aviation for more than 50 years, and i know what these “Second Source Manufacturers” are capable of!
Graft and lax maintenance are surely involved, but an inability to produce or acquire parts, even if counterfeit, are not the reason IMHO.

In a CM battle though you are implicitly in a situation where chucking a Tunguska in the area is reasonable, and the impact of cost exchange ratios doesn't matter because the battle is its own self contained world.
In Ukraine on the other hand, rather than a single $35k reaper, you've got dozens of tiny quad copter drones, an operational system that has spent the last 18 months figuring out how to integrate them in to the kill chain,  and a Tunguska that close to the front is going to quickly wind up as an expensive and hard to replace scrap metal sculpture installation.
A Tunguska *could* shoot down some quad copters, although not as easily as a Raven, but you're going to run out of Tunguskas very quickly if you send them all to do short range air defence close to the line of contact. 

And to translate for the Americans, Scrapheap Challenge is the UK version that's pretty much identical to the US Junkyard Wars.

No, but it makes all the other problems much worse. The details of the math matter here. If you have ten brigades and you utterly wreck two or three of them to get the other seven loose in yours opponents rear area, and they do enough damage that the enemy has to retreat tens or hundreds of miles, with mass surrenders and such. Then you have just achieved a major military success, albeit an expensive one. I have essentially just described the battle of El Alamein, which despite very high losses is considered a huge success for the British by almost everyone.
If you launch an attack with ten brigades and seven of of them get shredded, and the other three have to retreat, well you have just lost rather badly. I have just described the battle of Kursk, and NOBODY thinks the Germans won that one. They were both set piece attacks against prepared positions. One of them worked and one of them didn't, because the details matter, and the current beyond enormous minefields in Ukraine are very most definitely one of those details.
Edit: The basis of the current disagreement between the Ukrainian and U.S. militaries is that the U.S. thinks Ukraine could have achieved an El Alamein style victory if they had stacked everything into one maximum effort push instead of spreading out there efforts in hopes of finding a seam in the Russian defenses. The Ukrainians are absolutely convinced that if they had done that they would simply have would have had the same kind of disaster the Germans experienced at Kursk, and the Russians have recently demonstrated at Vuhledar and Adviika. Trying five times as hard in spot where the defense is truly solid, relative to what you can bring to bear, just gets five times as many people killed. So what we are talking about, with varying degrees of sanity, is how to move the math in Ukraine favor, just enough.

Oh my god! the vast majority of users on this forum write posts without any evidence or argument. No one demands any facts or evidence from them, but only if it is good news (Russians are stupid, Russian technology sucks, Russians are losing, we are not risking anything). As soon as bad news or unpopular thoughts appear, demands for evidence and arguments immediately arise

My one experience on the Mexican border was weird. I'm from the UK, and was travelling to Mexico for a few days for work, but landing at Tucson, Arizona and being picked up by a driver. This was 2001. Having heard all the stuff in the 90's about the Us-Mexican border and all the efforts to stop illegal crossings, I was rather surprised that we just drove down to some quiet border town, and through in to Mexico without stopping. I don't think the border post was even manned. On the way back I thing there was a guard there, but he just kind of glanced up as we drove past.
Came across a roadblock checking identities about 20 miles back inside the US, which I guess was some kind of border patrol, but I don't think they looked at my passport either ('cos I didn't look Mexican?)
Apropos of nothing in particular, but the gap between the rhetoric I was hearing and my experience amused me.