dan/california

I don't disagree with any of this, but it still amounts to doing something stupid and hoping it wouldn't end badly. Edit: And my bit was certainly how it was sold, even though the money guys were actually driving the bus.

At least three of them would be my guess....

We were all drunk in 1991, both literally and figuratively, we placed this HUGE bet at the blackjack table that if we helped China sort outs its economy and join the "rules based order" on generous terms, that its politics would naturally evolve in a more benign direction. We lost, rather badly, and the price is going to be another ~century of great power competition. Actually that is the best case scenario.

Worth the watch.

Lets just say he is unimpressed with his commanders...

This is clearly the biggest crack the Putin regime's facade of unity that we have seen. The problem with looking at the last three hundred years of history is that China was weak, almost to the point of irrelevance, that entire three hundred years. China has suddenly become very strong, this is going to effect the equilibrium that has let Russia survive being one the worst run countries on the planet. See below... Both of these posts are excellent, Putins has rejected the idea trying to manage decline well. He has committed to making a grand imperial comeback, or a crater.

I really look forward to the comparisons between the two systems after the war. The Archer is an amazingly nice system, automated EVERYTHING. . The Caesar though hits a really nice sweet spot of having all of the tech it actually needs, but nothing that it doesn't. The Caesar pays for that with a slightly longer time to shoot and leave. Really interesting comparison to be made there if we ever get any real data.

This totally makes sense, because L39 barrels are all but obsolete. The first tier standard going forward is going to guns that shoot 45 or 50 kilometers with more or less normal ammunition, and double that with the fancy stuff. L52 barrels are just one of the things that are absolutely required to make that happen. I am not saying they are useless in Ukraine BTW, I am saying all of the vehicles in the general class of L39 barreled SPGs are a rapidly wasting asset, and most of the ones that exist anywhere n NATO ought to be on the way to Ukraine. The manufacturing rate for newer systems obviously needs to go WAY up.

Better late than never...

All of this conversation reminds me of how the Spanish Civil war was the test bed for so much of what we saw from 1940 to 1945.

It will require some real engineering, because gun launched anything requires real engineering, but there are already a ton of other ways to do terminal guidance out there. Furthermore the fact recon drones that can stand off a kilometer or five seem far far less susceptible to jamming makes all of those solution easier. Whether it is laser guidance, or literally passing a terrain image thru to the seeker in the shell, it is all just engineering, not radical scientific breakthroughs. A home on jam version of the Excalibur would seem rather useful as well. All of this more or less exactly parallels the gun vs armor race in WW2. If I am remembering something Steve wrote forever ago correctly, " As the war progressed, tanks that were one year old were at a significant disadvantage, and two year old tanks and guns were effectively obsolete". The more things change, the more they uhm don't. Hasn't the U.S. already been developing, and maybe even building some multi mode seekers for some air launched munitions? Fitting those to GMLRS doesn't seem that hard.

I am on The_Capt's side on this one. Armored vehicles that have had to preemptively blind themselves to stay alive the last five or ten kilometers have reduced their effectiveness by 80 or 90%. Also the counters to this are extremely obvious. Drones will get a little bigger, an optimized warhead will be developed, and last but not least all the home on jam experiments that have to be underway somewhere will ramp up into production. What tanks need to do to remain useful in the next turn of the cycle is rather less obvious, because as we have discussed any number of times, the just can't get any heavier, and a practical matter they are ALREADY to expensive

I fully agree it would take some sort of epic crack up in the Putin regime for Ukraine to get it all back. But if the regimes DOES crack their are simply so many ways it could go all anybody will be able to do is try to surf the avalanche.

This is true, but trading even ten or twenty $2500 dollar drones for a multimillion dollar tank or AFV is still great deal. And remember last mile autonomy, and then more or less complete autonomy, are bearing down like an oncoming train. Throw in the fact that tanks can't get any heavier and still move, and my money is on the drones long term. Just tried to check, and the RPG-29 tandem warhead is essentially identical to the RPG-7VR, and they both seem to weigh about double the basic RPG-7 anti armor round. That isn't insignificant, but it certainly doesn't seem unsurmountable in terms of drone reengineering. A cope cage that stand up to the tandem charge though....

But we have to keep in mind that 99% of the FPV drones out there are made with random RPG-7 warheads from the approximate infinity of them the USSR left lying around. At some point they will start making new tandem warheads for them that approximate an RPG-29. That will instantly make scrap metal cope cages obsolete. Then the whole back and forth cycle will go another round.

I have been saying for a very long time that railroad sabotage is the only effective form of political protest. Maybe it is finally sinking in for a few Russians that you ought to accomplish more than waving a sign around before getting shipped to a labor camp for what might as well be forever.

Wouldn't Super Tucanos be perfect in the drone hunting role? I realize the IFF is a problem, but otherwise it seems like these thing would be perfect for hunting both Orlan/Zala drones, and Shaheeds.

I mostly agree with you, but at least one deputy/assistant defense minster is sitting in prison. I am not sure what is more significant, that some other faction has moved against someone at that level, or that the guy in question didn't just fall out a window? Something is happening.

It doesn't have to be true, or even believed by Putin, for it to be a useful excuse for the Czar to rid himself of some poorly performing ministers. This is triply true given that we all know the ministers in question are incompetent, and utterly corrupt, even if some or all of the details of the described conspiracy are fiction. It may simply be that Putin has decided it is time to blame someone for the epic, world historical, disaster of this war. The interesting and important question is whether the new ministers will be any better at their jobs? Or does the snake pit of Putin's system make it impossible for him to put in competent people?

A credible report that Ukraine is pulling its one ~battalion of Abrams out of active combat because current combat conditions are making them ineffective and to vulnerable, especially drones. I am filing this one firmly in the tank is dead file.

QUADRUPLE POST, bleep me I was on a roll, sorry.

triple post

double post

You are understating how crazy this story is, whether it is true is another question, but back to that in a minute. The story is saying that the ENTIRE WAR resulted form an effort by Shoigu and Ivanov to cover the massive extent of their embezzlement. And then not content with that, they tried to take over Prigozhin's empire exactly the way they he said they did, and THIS resulted in the march on Moscow. Now Putin has finally realized what is going on. This is BEYOND NUTS. Yet Ivanov is sitting in prison for something. Apparently the Patrushev clan is leading the other faction at the Czars court, and think they finally have the rope to hang their rivals. This doesn't even have to be true, or mostly true, if enough of the Russian elite believe it to start a real power struggle. I am not sure I believe any of this, but clearly a real argument about something is breaking loose between Kremlin factions. That is not a small thing.

The thing is, Putin could almost certainly done a smaller, less ambitious, version of the "SMO" and more or less gotten away with it. His epic mistake was to make a great show of his intentions to burn down Kyiv and crucify, or worse, anybody who looked at him sideways. This made it impossible for the West to ignore what was going on and continue business as usual. He really did execute the worst plan since at least Napoleon's march on Moscow with a complete absence of competence. As I have said a number of time a smart autocrat would have declared victory May 1st of 2022, and memory holed the whole thing. Putin is not very smart, he just a psychopath who very unfortunately snuck into the top job.