dan/california

Opposite to my visual impression, thank you sorting that.

Steve you clearly think Ukraine even seriously threatening even a feint on Russian territory is a very bad idea. Do you think Belarus enjoys the same "political immunity" for lack of a better term. I can envision a scenario where all Russian forces outside of the 2/24 lines have been smashed or left, Ukraine is liberating the Donbas, and Putin STILL won't stop launching cruise missiles at random civilian targets or lift the Black Sea blockade. Do you think Ukraine has an option to threaten Belarus if Putin doesn't stand down?

On further thought Belgord is probably a bridge too far, and that movie ended badly the first time. Just to get more specific about Ukraines current options, can any of Ukraines Soviet descended system hit militarily relevant parts of Belgorod from the ground they hold now? I am pretty sure the U.S. told them not to do that with any of the new stuff.

Ukr doesn't have the logistics, or the numbers to threaten Moscow. I am pretty sure they can take enough of Belgorod to utterly bleep the entire Russian campaign though. They don't have to hold it, or even really take it. Just utterly wreck the militarily useful bits. The rail yard and the oil infrastructure comes immediately to mind. Any ammo dumps they can find, of course. The question is whether or not they can just as easily take Kupiansk for 90% of the military value, and ten percent of the freakout from various corners that Putin will go nuclear.

Couldn't you pull it straight with half inch wire rope, and truck-bed's worth of rigging equipment? I mean that is not exactly the Mississippi they are trying to cross there. If you were moderately creative with the rigging you could even have the pulling vehicle on the starting side. It looks like their are plenty of trees to anchor off of.

I am betting it started out a lot straighter, and the free end got carried down stream when the artillery blew it loose. Or maybe they couldn't lay it straight in the current in the first place.

Can't vouch for authenticity, but fascinating if true.

NATO 155 airburst? Instead if the 152 digging huge holes in the ground? A few point detonation rounds for the bridge itself?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-troops-finally-realize-theyve-been-hung-out-to-dry-intercepted-call-from-ukraine-suggests?ref=scroll You have to eat Russian Navy food, and THEN it gets unpleasant....

TAKE MY MONEY!

In the future any competent military will also have drone sensor packages unobtrusively nailed to a tree every kilometer or so to watch something as important as a river that is a major piece of your defensive line. Literally all you need is a well thought out militarized cell phone with glue patch on the back. We are, mostly, in this war, talking about drones being used in single digit numbers in any one area. In the next war drones and drone like things are going to be employed by the hundreds at a minimum.

Yes, but for a major set piece attack it is a SMALL technical leap to have every drone preprogrammed with both the GPS coordinates, and an hour old image of the section of trench it is supposed to hit. Preprogram everything, flight path, the attack angle aligned with the trench angle, the whole bit. And then just have them either hit the whole system at once when your troops are close enough to make them man the actual fighting positions, or key on movement in their tiny little assigned trench zone.

Yes it is, but it is a VERY small technical leap program 100 of them simultaneously detonate in every single zig zag of a major trench system, at the same time in perfect coordination with the assault. I mean the Russians can't get this done, they are proven military incompetents, but the Ukrainians could, with a few months to work on it, and a budget. I suspect it is WELL within Chinese capability if they applied themselves.

We haven't seen Switchblades, or the equivalent employed by the five ton truckload yet. If we don't see it before the end of this war. We will surely see it on day one of the next one.

There are at least ten or twenty Russian tanks that just drove off a bridge or something like aren't there? I mean verified, photographed and posted on Oryx?

I wonder how many of them lived long enough to realize they were bleeped?

If we move the discussion to bicycle safe street design, Steve will have us shot!

This would amount to two full BTG more or less, yes?

Intentional geese imitation, I love it.

Both here, and with the comment about how radar sees mortar shells easily, you actually point out why drones break/defeat so many current radar systems. Drones are slow, for eighty years everything radar has been trying to find is fast, or faster than that. So the easy way to turn your screen from an unintelligible mass of interference into something you can work with is to filter out everything below say a 100 mph just to pick a number. It is a nontrivial problem to rework this, and difficult for existing systems. The Russians seem to have attempted to bleep with this filter on their current systems, and are now LITERALLY firing S300, and S400 missiles at flocks of geese, at least occasionally. Because geese and a lot of drones fly around at about the same speed. I am not saying this is not a solvable problem, but it is probably a brand new radar system sort of solution, or at least a bleep ton of reprogramming on the radars most countries use. Drones built to hunt other drones will definitely be a thing, and missiles optimized to kill drones. And in noteworthy case of trying to get ahead of the problem https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/army-stryker-laser-weapons-system-shorad/ Lasers are the only way to kill drones at the ranges you actually need, at a price you can afford. Who said the future wasn't cool. The should ship these to Ukraine TODAY. Make the Orlans go away and Ukraine wraps this up in half the time, and with far lower losses. Assuming these work s advertised we get back to the discussion about treating drones as ammo, instead of something you expect to use more than once.

Is Lukashenko really that stupid and/or desperate? Maybe Putin flat out threatened to kill him? Or he is still just trying to stall until the problem goes away?

Perfectly stated, so Steve about that new version of the game.......