dan/california

Emergent AI is already happening, the last generation or two of of big AI models have been able to do things which surprised the bleep out of the people that wrote them. They don't have a very good idea of what will happen when they turn up the processing power by another order of magnitude or two either. That is why people are running around with their hair on fire.

I think atomized is the term he is looking for...

Phillips O'Brian checks in on the subject of the day.

Seeing reports That Ukraine got at least three Russian planes on the ground at Balbek airfield in Crimea, anybody have anything solid?

Above is the current guess on specs for the Iphone 16. I have also read it it going to have some sort of optimization for running AI directly on the phone. If you replace one of the cameras with a with the best room temperature infrared you can get for a reasonable price you have a luxury model drone guidance kit for ~1500.

Still waiting for a coherent explanation of what is happening.

A very interesting podcast that bears on many tof the things currently under discussion. It strongly advocates an umanned heavy force for the defense of Taiwan among other things.

If communications are effectively jammed by by EW i would argue both would go up a lot for a drone that doesn't need to phone home versus one that does.

If you look at this video around the four minute mark, the tech to do rather good target ID discrimination at the approximate range and viewpoint of a drone already exists. And it has for a while. The Pentagon dodged the whole autonomy issue on this by saying the man in loop level was handled at the decision to drop the whole bomb. It is now completely practical give every submunition its own custom quadcopter ride. What I am trying say is that the military effectiveness of giving said quadcopters a kill box and a set of targeting priorities is going to be at least an order order of magnitude more effective than making each of them phone home for permission in a high EW environment. I am just saying a we should apply a bit of realism now, and not after we have gotten a couple of heavy Brigades cut into little tiny pieces. At which point we will do it in a panic, badly.

What I am trying to say is maybe we shouldn't write a new set of rules that guarantee we lose the next war. Just as a first pass proposal.

The defense contractors will over charge, that is what they do for a living. What we don't know is how big the improvements will be. I can see it being the above mentioned five percent, I can see them them literally being WORSE, or I can see them being so lethal we move right along into science fiction scenarios. My greatest worry is that the NATO defense contractor version will scrupulously observe limits on AI/autonomy, and the other sides won't. So the otherwise vastly inferior version being cranked out of Chinese toy factories and garages all over the the global south will be vastly more effective, even with grossly inferior hardware.

And every defense contractor is briefing their pet congresscritters on how THEIR product is perfect for the new doctrine, whatever it is...

My favorite quote/story from Chinese History, supposedly... "The General says to adjutant, "What is the penalty for being late?" "Death Sir!" responds the unhappy adjutant. The General "What is the penalty for rebellion?" "Death Sir" responds the the VERY unhappy adjutant. The General" Well we are late, incidentally we are also rebelling". The story, which is far to good to check, is that after a nice ugly civil war he founded the next dynasty.

i am thinking the short term plan is some sort of super basic visual IFF. Either have some LEDS that flash in a programable pattern that can be changed frequently, Or have them fly some sort of random pattern a kilometer or two out. It would at least make a trick like this harder.

The development cycle is not slowing down.

A hard watch, but informative.

So i read the Ortona case study, in addition to being interesting in itself it is useful to contrast it with some vaguely similar engagements in Ukraine. I picked Vuhledar because it is the closet in population size. Avdiika is three times the size. Scaled for population size they are held by units at similar strength. Very approximately 1000 men per ten thousand in prewar population. All three are a style of construction that effectively makes every building a a prebuilt strong point. I think we can agree that a German parachute battalion consisted of reasonably competent soldiers, and they had artillery support. So the point I am trying to make is that with admittedly very heavy casualties, the Canadians were able to TAKE Ortona in a month of hard fighting. The Russians have taken between five and ten times the number of casualties the Canadians took at Ortona in their assaults on Vuhledar, and Adviika. The Russians have spent ammo in both places like it was free. Both towns are still firmly in Ukrainian hands. That is how much the relative advantage of being on the defense has increased since 1943. Discuss.

We have entered a period of almost complete battlefield illumination, and denial. ALL of the field manuals are going to have to be rewritten to take this into account. Throw in the fact the leading edge, and 90% of the CSIR is going to consists of unmanned platforms, and we are just at the point of starting over on doctrine. That doctrine rewrite will extend from blue water naval operations down to how to secure a sewer system. Then we start on the hard part, getting procurement to actually change to reflect that new doctrine. It sounds like The_Capt is fairly close to retirement, the next person in his job is going to be rather busy.

It turns out you can do a decent smart mine with the standard FPV drone. Just fly them in at dusk, and make the roads impassable until dawn. If they aren't already doing it it will be trivial to make this autonomous. See bright light, rise one meter, and point that way. They so need a railway version.

I want a new modern game...

Not at all, but it the clearest possible example of the U.S. not being able to decide whether we are in this to win it, or not. Their is absolutely no reason except our own idiocy that DPICM shells were not supplied with the first 155mm guns. What I am trying to say is that we have had a strategy of extremely gradual ramping up in capability for the Ukrainians, and it gave the Russians to much time to get their bleep together. And now we are in a 1916-7 situation, where the lines have frozen, and the cost to move them is just too high. Edit: The fact we STILL have not given the Ukrainians the ability to drop the Kerch bridge is the second extremely obvious example.

Mercenaries go to the highest bidder. In terms of what they are advertising that is the Russians. They are at least pretending to offer crazy amounts of money by third world standards. How often they actually pay up is another question, but then that has been a problem in that business for 5000 years.