dan/california

Do we think this is true? because it implies a later model version of the Abrams than I thought they were getting. It also seems like the perfect round for how so much of the fighting in Ukraine seems to go. And yes I understand a guided mortar shell works just as well, but this does imply that at least we are trying to make the Abrams we sent as effective as possible.

Exit polls should be outlawed...

This seems to be the actual vehicle to move Ukraine funding, we shall see.

This still the best news of the day, every single poll was screaming that The pro Putin party had it in the bag.

Currently blowing up all of my other social media raising H^$# about this.

This is a setback not a disaster. This is 45 day short term deal, Biden can squeeze out a months worth of support from existing authorities fairly easily. It may take a week to see where things are actually at.

Not good...

These are not mutually exclusive...

https://defence-blog.com/us-military-receives-laser-air-defense-weapons/ These Stryker mounted lasers need to be Ukraine, needed to be there months ago. If they work it is a huge plus, if they don't, well at least we know. The drone systems they need to engage are not going get any less dangerous next year, or the year after that. The Chinese stealing the plans through new model hacking, or old fashioned spy work, is an infinitely greater risk too any secret technology than deploying them to Ukraine.

Dmitri is back on it after a little break.

The extremely unpleasant problem of being stuck with no good choices to speak of is not just a historical phenomenon, unfortunately.

I think both the counter insurgency issue and the tracks vs wheels debate depends quite a lot on the specific needs of the country in question. Ukraine and Poland are rather big places that might really want to move a whole division or more several hundred miles and put them straight into the fight. I think wheels win for that hands down. Steve eloquently detailed many years ago how Israel is the exact opposite. Pretty much the largest possible operational move is less than a hundred miles, and everything in the force might as well have tracks and the ability to withstand heavy ATGMs. Finland might be a different special case simply because of how much of the place is a boggy forest. Taiwan is different yet again because they probably have to PLAN on losing control of the air, at least for significant stretches of time. They probably need virtually everything to be so ultralight as to be disposable. Armoring the front against 14.5mm probably makes sense, but still think you need to be ruthless in keeping the armor weight down. Anything lighter that a Leopard 2 or a CV90 is vulnerable to most of the weapons on a high intensity battlefield, everything else needs to focus on hiding. The concept I am pushing, and I think you are sort of agreeing with, is a vehicle that can move drones and infantry to the edge of the fight and hide, while providing enough support to keep those drones and infantry in the fight. Counter insurgency where the local population is truly unfriendly probably just takes a whole different vehicle. How to counter drones in a counterinsurgency situation is its own special nightmare.

Landmesser needed a ticket to pretty much anywhere else, which he and his family sadly didn't get in time. The CDS just needs the news cycle to move on. Given the amount stupidity committed daily, it surely will. I do hope the actual guilty parties in the various offices of the Canadian Parliament enjoy a scintillating stretch of employment as parking lot attendants or or similar. Hopefully the demise of their careers will become sufficiently legendary whole generations of staffers will pay a bit more attention.

Well I got banned on twitter for stating U.S. foreign policy too clearly. But I still check in on five or six accounts every day with the very limited functionality they allow. Doing more and more with threads. It has picked up a lot just recently. Still not followed thru with stated intention to really dig into Telegram, but I get closer by the day.

All good comments, all good questions, we just don't know what the future looks like until Lockheed says they have a real anti drone solution. Then everybody goes out to the desert for a SERIOUS test. If they have something that really can stop a drone swarm, a hundred drone, autonomous, murder bot SWARM, then the future of virtually the entirety of ground warfare goes one way. If they fail the test miserably there just isn't going to be anything but drones dueling it out with drones for ten kilometers back from the notional front line. And at the moment flying drones are not very good at finding each other, so that is just going to be a little nuts. From where I sit, every single piece of the autonomous murder bot swarm is just sitting there waiting to be integrated. The Israelis probably have something ready to show off at any time. Indeed we might see it deployed by at least one side in Ukraine next year. Stopping it is a whole different story

I really think a cheaper version of the Stryker is superior to a new tracked system. Just the reduced maintenance, and increased operational mobility are worth any possible minuses that come with wheels. The fundamental theory of this vehicle is that it should never be exposed to direct fire. It should be protected against 7.62mm rifle rounds, and weaker shell splinters. Everything else is the job ob of point defense/APS or prayer. Everything needs to be optimized for maximum cargo capacity, and maximum available electric power. I really think a true hybrid drive train is the way to go. So a diesel generator that charges the batteries that power the electric motors that turn the wheels. This gives the maximum possible availabe electric power to charge batteries for everything else the squad is carrying, and the power to run radars, jammers, lasers, and who knows what else. Now, and let me give a nod to your two vehicle concept. at least half of the job of the affordable Stryker concept is to carry, deliver, support, charge and so on something like the UGV above, or maybe ~3 smaller versions. I think these are a little to big and expensive for the amount of attrition they will experience. And since the larger manned vehicle has been optimized for battery charging the smaller units are pure electric, with all the low signature benefits that come from running on battery only.

Pskov might be one of the worst case scenarios. The entire economy is based one way or another on the VDV base(s) there. This story has stuck with me as strongly as any thing reported out of Russia in the whole war. Almost certain some of the kids in that picture have had a father come back in a zinc coffin.

The endless carping about AI from "human rights" organizations amount to a demand that we lose the next conventional war catastrophically. Because anybody trying to tell you that the Chinese are not going to do these systems on a epic scale is a traitor or a useful idiot. The technological barn door isn't just open, it is in little tiny burning pieces all over eastern Ukraine.

These two statements are not compatible with each other.

A a rather large diffrence in what is killing tanks from more or less exactly fifty years ago.

At least some evidence the Russians are getting even closer to the bottom of the barrel. I didn't realize there was a single adult male left in the LPR. I guess some branch of the FSB and/or the Kadyvorites managed to round up the last stragglers.

We have talked about it PLENTY here. To the point of arguing about how much combat engineering to add to the next game in various ways. Mines are just a stupidly hard problem at the fundamental physics level, and the TONS of money thrown at at least parts of the problem since 2003 have produced very little except V shaped hulls. Still hoping the renewed impetus of the war will finally result in a fundamental breakthrough, it jus has NOT happened yet. Indeed the Ukrainians have resorted to the extremely old fashioned method of the men crawling around in the dirt with a probe and a metal detector. I honestly think the biggest reason that works is that the Russians are unwilling to reveal their firing positions to shoot at such spread out targets.