dan/california

The interesting thing about heavily armored knights is that they went through exactly the same cycle we are watching heavy mechanized forces go through now. They kept getting heavier, more expensive, fewer, and less usable in many types of terrain. Pikes, better bows, halberds, and better tactics, used by better trained infantry, had made them far less important even before gunpowder changed everything.

And WHICH missiles and bombs...

I freely admit that the common (edit: English) interpretation is incorrect, but in common usage it barely applies to anything east of the Rhine. As far as almost anyone who isn't a forumite level history buff is concerned all that was terra incongita before ~1750. Apologies in advance to our members from that part of the world.

Full Mongol Empire at the peak of its powers/Waffen SS actually. "Medieval" was ugly, but rarely genocidal. Yes there were exceptions, but usually the idea was to simply redirect the rents/profits from whatever you trying to conquer, not erase the place. Ghengis Khan on the other hand...

The tankettes need to be truly small, and expendable. The minimum set of tracks that can carry a 40mm AGL, and a thirty caliber machine gun. You might even want to go light enough that they carry either a grenade launcher or a machine gun., not both. With some semblance of electronic fire control the 40mm would even provide a modest indirect fire capability. That is enough to take out most unarmored targets and force anything bigger to shoot back. Anything bigger that does shoot back, and as many other targets as possible should be referred to the fires complex. The task of the tankettes is recon by some combination of fire, and death. They need to roll off of production lines that require almost zero human labor in the direct production processes. The tankettes themselves should be thought of as munitions, not a piece of capital equipment.

With half a million Russian casualties, and every square kilometer that Ukraine has given up looking more cratered than the Somme, this is the single dumbest bit of Russian propaganda you have spouted. That is a strong statement, too. You are spouting nonsense at a group of people who have been paying attention since the beginning. Try harder, or go away.

Perun is just really good at what he does!

Putin seems to have decided to put the FSB 100% in charge of the war, and more or less everything else. Also ISW is PROFOUNDLY unimpressed with Putin' latest ceasefire feelers.

ISWs sources are better than mine, if they they say the Ukrainians did it I accept that.

I suspect both the judge and the defendant would have a failed attempt to learn to fly rather shortly.

A lot of detail about the purge/changing of the guard at the Russian MOD, mentions several people I hadn't heard about. Popov's trial is already under way. I would bet a lot of money the verdict has already been dictated, too.

Which brigs me back to at least the possibility the Russians did this themselves in the attempt to create diplomatic leverage. And whether or not the U.S. three letter agencies know better may not matter. The whole thing might be an information op aimed at places like Brazil and Indonesia to help ensure they stay on the sidelines, or undermine Ukraine at the U.N.. Something we are not very good at is keeping up with the state of the propaganda war outside of European, and English speaking, media and diplomatic environments.

It has in fact all but arrived. Something almost exactly like this is going have an RPG warhead strapped to it and be told to go hunting literally any day now. Imagine Baba Yaga type mother ships releasing them ten at a time. How long before an ATACMs class missile can deploy say ~50 of them? You would probably need a braking parachute on the warhead before they dispensed but there isn't anything impossible about that.

Not at all sure I agree with this. The Putin regime wants to survive this war. It seems to have recently, MAYBE, decided that getting some sort of ceasefire/armistice is its best chance. Stating that they wouldn't mess with a radar whose primary purpose is to never be used, and to announce the end of the world if it is, does not accord with anything Putin has done since February 2022. He has an enormous tolerance for risk, and things like blowing the Khahovka dam, and the endless threats to cause a nuclear melt down prove it. Putin would sacrifice strategic assets in heartbeat to get out of the bind he has stuck himself into. It will be very revealing to see if there is a big increase in U.S. finger wagging about Ukrainian strikes in Russia. I am assuming we have pretty good information one way or the other on what happened here. Among other things the posted photos were taken at ground level at what is presumably a very secure facility. and it happens at the exact moment Russia starts to push for a cease fire. All sorts of things are just to convenient for the Kremlin here.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/23/3-billion-secret-program-undermining-bidens-tech-policy-00158757 It might not be the best way to find the money, but at least someone understands that the Pentagon a needs a supply of chips with a truly secure supply chain.

There is no evidence Ukraine has ever violated an agreement with the U.S. about the utilization of a particular weapon system. Indeed their is at least a a rumor that the U.S. sees an actual target list beforehand for the longer range stuff. The Ukrainian very long range drone program is first and foremost a response to the six month stoppage in U.S. aid. We can't possibly blame them for that. I am absolutely certain the Ukrainians would give the U.S. the same target pre approval with that system in return for being able to drop a couple of dozen ATACMS on Tagnerog, and other air bases just over the Russian border from Ukraine. It even sounds like that deal might be underway. We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the Russian air defense system is so broken that top tier strategic assets can hit by what amount to autonomous kamikaze Cessnas. Last but not least, their is a none zero chance the Russians blew up their own radar just to apply diplomatic pressure on the Ukrainians over the strike program. Said program is by all appearances having an effect. If we want the Ukrainians to quit fighting, and accept a ceasefire/armistice on the current lines, all we have to do is accept them into (Edit: NATO) and the EU at the same table, at the same time. If we can't get ourselves organized to do that the choices are allowing Ukraine to be defeated, or supporting it until Russia collapses. Seems like it is time for some diplomats to have a frank discussion or five.

How long before they die one or more of a laundry list of horribles diseases?

It is at least possible that Russia's entire plan for this year was based on the U.S. aid never passing. Now that it has, and Ukrainian gunners are back action at full volume, among other things, everything they are doing may be a panicked twitch to keep the Czar appeased for another week. The question remains, does anybody on the Russian side have the sense to go home, or are they keep going until something breaks, and takes the regime down with it.

A podcast/interview Phd Harold Brown, head of the CSIS. It is discussing most of the same things we have been. He is of the opinion that we can and must be more aggressive about supporting Ukraine, but mostly agrees that we need to keep the war in a box as The_Capt puts it. He is strongly of the opinion that the West is not scaling up military production with sufficient urgency. Russia, and to a large extent CHINA, have gone to essentially wartime levels of production across the board. We uhm haven't, we really haven't, and it has to be fixed. He discusses the evolving more or less alliance between Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. he China's level of support to Russia for Ukraine is high and rising rapidly. He says U.S. planning needs to start taking account of possible coordinated action between them in a crisis/war. I would argue that the mess in Gaza is ALREAY evidence of coordinated action between them, but we will put that aside for now. The whole podcast is worth your time.

So here is the real question, is Putin Hitler, or is he Gadaffi? Gadaffi was a wildly annoying bleep, but he was mostly dangerous to his own people, mostly. Hitler on the other hand was going to keep going until he was stopped, every victory he ever won just fueled his appetite for more. So would Putin be willing to accept a half a loaf in Ukraine, or even a whole one, and decide he could spend the rest of his years in some semblance of peace? Or does every victory simply give him an appetite for more and bigger conquests? I would point out he basically got away with Crimea, and was very notably not wise enough to quit. But Crimea didn't cost half a million casualties and counting, and most of Russia's military inheritance from the USSR. I don't claim to know the answer to the question, but it is the one we really need to be asking.

I am trying to get inside Putin's head here, so take this with a grain of salt. Given that A Putin considers the fall of the USSR a massive historical tragedy, and B that it happened shortly after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Has Putin drawn the wrong lesson? Has he convinced himself that the problem was the withdrawal, not the near decade of grinding war that preceded it?

From the same article.

This is a long, fairly technical article about how apple puts together a three D scan of a room. A decent autonomous drone control system would a mostly analogous process. And as Steve has been emphasizing, in a real war perfection is not a requirement.