dan/california

155, GMLRS, ATACMS. Bradleys. All of these have been proven to work, they just need a ton more of them. NASSAMS and missiles for it. Then put real money and technical effort behind Ukraines drone programs. Last but most certainly not least would be more training, preferably measured in months, not weeks.

Which is whatever is after crazy making.

If I may attempt to summarize, you have to win the war to earn the privilege of making the rules. And if rejecting a new technology means you lose....

Depending on a great many things this may or may not be true. It is certainly possible it is true and the second drone, and the seventh can't learn anything from the previous attempts. There are great many ways that learning could occur though. The first, most obvious, and certainly happening right now is that the same guy is flying the next drone when it shows up in a few minutes, perhaps less if they have an orbit of them already in the air. The drone pilot knows what he did wrong, and doesn't make the same mistake the next time. The second possibility, the FPV drone is being observed by an ISR drone with vastly better sensors, the operators of the two systems are in communication, and the ISR guy can tell the FPV guy what he did wrong for round 2. Third way, the drones are using at least last kilometer autonomy, and start missing., The aforementioned ISR drone can tell the unit flying the FPV drones to change their targeting parameters. The fourth and most important way though, is that every time someone makes a improvement in an autonomous AI drone program, that program shows up in ALL the drones next month, and it will just iterate forever. So the autonomous piloting systems flying nine months after the first ones come out might be five, or twenty five, or 225 times better than the first models.

Outstanding!

Then the jammer will have to go to remote antennas, so the expensive bits, and the operator are in a hole a hundred yards away. And then the "wild weasel drones" (TM) will have to operate in small packs where where most of them autonomously attack everything around the antenna with a relevant infra red signature. Then the people doing the jamming.... and on the game goes. This war is in the process of creating an entire group of new military specialties, and I don't see it doing anything but multiplying.

ISW has a lengthy discussion on the subject of the day, including quotes from Zelensky on the subject. He would REALLY like some some artillery ammunition and more SAMs soonest. At the same time drones are killing a LOT of Russian armored vehicles. The other great item is the last bullet point. Russian prisons have been emptied out to such a degree that the prison guards are the next people on the list for being "volunteered", they are currently standing around with nothing to do and the powers that be have noticed. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Read Dmitri every day.

So some body has already done pop out wings. It already has a pretty good sensor package. All it needs is a tiny solid fuel motor and some way warp those wings for control purposes, and instead of a 150 meter circle, it is a 1500 meter circle. I think that might worth the some engineering effort. setting up a new line is almost free, as a marginal cost, because we need LOTS of new lines for every type of 155 round in the inventory. They might as well be better 155 rounds with current generation electronics.

The current doctrine is hitting two fundamental physics problems. Tanks simply can't get any heavier, they are already so heavy that they can't go more places than they can in any environment except hardpan desert, never mind crossing anything but the largest bridges. Second a well designed five or ten kg tandem shaped charge can kill any land vehicle in existence, and the actual warhead cost at most a few thousand dollars. With tanks running five million and up the math doesn't add. All the points of friction that used to make introducing the expensive tank to cheap warhead are melting before our eyes. We need a whole new plan. Everyone is being way to rigid about categories, drones and artillery are going to merge into a single multiply cross threaded complex of explosive delivery on demand. There will be unmanned indirect fire systems from 40mm all the way up to 155mm or even larger. There will be artillery and rocket delivered drones all the way up to the payload of an ATACMs. The artillery deployed sub munitions in the very effective German smart round were developed in 1989. They deploy a parachute and float over an unlucky target, or not. Electronics and and and everything else have improved in the last thirty years, just a bit. There is ZERO reason except some development time and money that a new version of this couldn't deploy the exact same submunition with pop out glider wings instead of a parachute. So now instead of sweeping a a strip a few tens of meters wide at the mercy of the wind, it systematically searches a square kilometer for the highest value target. And communicates with the rest of the salvo to avoid double kills. and if they can get it working with new some of the rocket assisted shells it might have a range of 80 or a hundred kilometers. Something approximating GLSDB could probably deliver 10 or twenty of the little monsters, and they wouldn't have to stand as much acceleration either. The possibilities just spin on from there.

In particular the gun can respond to close targets far faster than anything else. Say you are in the process of stopping and boarding a freighter of unknown provenance/registration/intentions, having a fast firing five inch gun pointed directly at the bridge of said freighter is a extremely good guarantee of the ships behavior unless the people on the bridge are suicidal. Furthermore the boom the five inch makes is unlikely to damage your own ship if it detonates a kilometer or two away.

The problem with battleships guns is that they can only be fired from a battleship. They are sort the poster child for somethig that is going to be few, expensive, and too valuable to lose. Where you can dump cruisse missiles out submarines, and other PGMs out submarines that are much harder to kill, or cheap surface vessels that could be praticlly disposable. The unbelievably expensive radar, defensive lasers, and who knows what else a surface ship will need to actually be survivable can go on a platform dedicated to staying alive, and providing C4SIR to the miisslie barges.. Ranges for artillery and drones are just going to go up, and then up more. https://www.nammo.com/story/the-range-revolution/ 100 km 155 is in late stage testing. Perun covers current and near future drones here with his usual brilliance, was posted a few pages ago, but definitely worth your time if you haven't watched it yet. What all of this adds up to is an ever expanding grey zone/no mans land in a more or less equal fight between first tier militaries, and probably vastly higher costs for a first tier power to take on a second, or third tier one. We are already at the point where both sides in Ukraine can barely bring a vehicles within 10km of the front, and they certainly can't stop moving in that zone for more than a minute or two. Next year in Ukraine that could easily be twenty km instead of ten. In the next war, five or ten years from now it could easily be fifty. U.S. is at the point of trying to get rid of towed guns completely. They can't shoot far enough, or scoot fast enough.

The worst part is that it is open in back, so it isn't even particuraly protective against a competent FPV pilot. I assume they tried closing it up, and found that either the crew was in danger of suffocation, or the engine experienced severe overheating. I could be the ever popular both.

Apologies for the double post.

I one hundred percent agree with Holien, a thousand casualties per DAY is not something the Russians can do forever, NOBODY can do that forever. The second thing the Russians can't do is fight this war without diesel and jet fuel. The Ukrainians need to push their campaign against Russian oil refineries as hard as they possibly can, and then harder than that. The one thing I would add, is drone DEFENCE. If the Ukrainians could could suddenly start knocking Russian drones out the sky wholesale, the entire Russian system would come apart in a month. This works both ways of course, so NATO needs to be absolutely sure the Ukrainians get there first.

It all part of the Russian propaganda/disinformation push. They are a whole lot better at that than they are actually fighting. EPIC! This has to be a movie eventually.

God is giving them one last warning to go the bleep home...

Has this been posted already?

I agree with this as far as it goes, but I think a great many people over estimate the predictability of the whole situation. There are nine different ways this whole thing could just BREAK. Jake Sullivan thinks he is acting in a way that decreases that risk, I am strongly of the opinion that he is mostly increasing the risk it breaks the wrong way. The chance to tie this thing up in a neat knot and pretend it never happened disappeared in April or May of 2022, after two years of ever increasing commitment of lives and treasure by everyone involved, someone is going lose.

NYT editorial page having an attack of sense.

Everything Steve and Bill have said above is is correct, but there is one or two more layers to it that is worth keeping in mind. Johnson understands that whatever happens in the next ~nine months, he is very unlikely to be the Speaker in the next Congress. The second issue is that according to all publicly available information Johnson is flat broke, or near as makes no matter. By broke I mean his financial declarations when he ascended to the Speakership showed a negative net worth, and only a few thousand dollars cash on hand. Throw in four kids and he has been on the ragged edge of bankruptcy for forever. I detail all this because it has a huge bearing on his current choices regarding Ukraine and the Speakership. The best choice for absolutely every one else is bad for Johnsons post Speakership career. If he does the right thing for Ukraine and the rest of the civilized world he greatly hurts his access to the wing nut welfare system that supports the right wing talking heads. Since his entire record in congress before the last year indicates he is an apparently sincere religious conservative with extreme views on abortion, among other things. He isn't going to get a job with MSNBC or one of the Centrist think tanks. I have no idea how he squares this circle.

Bleep me I hope he is wrong.