Tux
-
Posts
713 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by Tux
-
-
3 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:
Agree, if Ukraine capitulates right now, all bloodshed will stop immediately. People in Kharkov will stop dying under Russian bombs, the residents of Kherson will stop dying under Russian artillery shells, and our infrastructure will stop suffering. Agree, there is a certain logic in this.
The West will also breathe a sigh of relief, because the threat of nuclear war will immediately cease. The defeat of Ukraine is beneficial to everyone and, conversely, the victory of Ukraine is not beneficial to anyone
Just like the bloodshed stopped in Bucha when Ukraine was defeated there?
The last serious response you’re getting from me is this: you are not currently capable of rational argument, so educate yourself and teach yourself the intellectual discipline required to master it before you expect others to be swayed by your arguments. Once you have done that you will understand for yourself how utterly nonsensical your above post was and the absurd conclusions that would stem from it if it was anywhere close to correct.
Ok, I’m done.
-
For the record, all, I’m well aware that ZellZeka’s posts so far are almost comically familiar in tone, content and even syntax to a certain category of posters this thread seems to attract one of every couple of months. As noted previously I think it’s always important to engage in good faith on the off chance that such is reciprocated.
If/when we find out it’s not I will happily drop out and let nature take its course.
-
7 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:
In Ukraine, pro-Russian parties are also not represented in parliament, but this does not negate the presence of significant pro-Russian sentiments in Ukrainian society
Well yes, you’re right, because pro-Russian parties have been banned in Ukraine. I’m not aware that they’ve been banned in Czechia so, on the face of it at least, no representation in Czech Parliament means not many people want to be represented by them in Czechia.
16 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:In addition, many of my friends and relatives here in Ukraine also support Russia. And Zelensky’s extremely unsuccessful policy aimed at mobilization is forcing more and more Ukrainians to support Russia
Ok, well that’s your friends’ and relatives’ right, confusing though I may find it (‘I don’t want the trauma and inconvenience of mobilisation, therefore I support the people trying to kill us’ - I mean wtf?!). What is clear though is that they represent Czech opinion even less than those thousands who turned out to support PRO, don’t they?
-
8 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:
But this does not change the fact that thousands of Czechs responded and took to the streets to support them
No, it doesn’t. Do you still think thousands of Czech people at this demonstration supports your claim that “Pro-Russian sentiments here are no less strong than in Hungary or Slovakia”, though?
The answer is no, it doesn’t, and in fact the article you linked to specifically mentions that the party who organised the demonstration have zero parliamentary representation. That suggests that their position specifically isn’t representative of most Czech citizens.
We also have Letters from Prague telling us, as a Czech person himself, that this pro-Russian position is not widely popular in a Czechia. Of course, in isolation, his contribution is only anecdotal but do you see how your link actually supports his assertion more than it does your own?
-
29 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:
Here is an example that I remember well: Thousands of Czechs went to a rally in support of Russia
From your own link:
“[The demonstration was organised by] a new political party known as PRO. … [The] group, whose name in English stands for Law, Respect, Expertise, has no seats in parliament.”
Forgive me if I don’t expect a Prague Putsch any time soon.
Every country has its extremists, with or without external provocation and support. Spotting them in the wild doesn’t mean they represent a majority opinion.
-
10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
So your theory is that Hungary is essentially going to walk away from the west and jump in with Russia, who is currently under an enormous sanctions regime that definitely won’t be lifted any time soon.
I mean at this point he could just answer “yes” and his ‘argument’ would be no less rational.
-
No, sorry, there’s no convincing argument here:
46 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:Study the mood of the population of Eastern Europe. I believe you will not dispute the fact that the residents of Slovakia and Hungary quite legitimately elected anti-Western politicians such as Orban or Fico. these politicians are known for their anti-Western/anti-NATO statements and yet they have significant support in their countries.
Granted, for the sake of this discussion.
46 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:The entry of Russians onto the borders of these countries will only strengthen their anti-Western sentiments.
Assertion/speculation. Needs support.
46 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:On the contrary, I argue that not a single NATO country, in the event of a Russian nuclear strike on another NATO member country, will lead to a retaliatory nuclear strike on Russia. No one wants to risk a nuclear retaliatory strike from Russia. For example, if Russia strikes Poland, the United States will under no circumstances launch a nuclear strike on Russia. This fact in no way strengthens faith in NATO
On the contrary to what? Also, this is baseless assertion again (feel free to add a base for it though). Also, you don’t get to introduce what turns out to be an assertion as an “argument” and then immediately leap to calling it a “fact”.
40 minutes ago, ZellZeka said:Do you want to say that the moods of the Czechs differ from the moods of the Slovaks who are close to them in spirit and worldview?
Overall, given that you’re the one who identified “logical thinking” as the basis for your argument, your grasp of how rational inductive reasoning works seems to be lacking.
tl;dr - You don’t have a rational argument here. You have a stream of thought which ends in a conclusion that you find meaningful but you cannot expect anyone else to find it convincing.
-
2 hours ago, ZellZeka said:
Think logically about what the fall of Ukraine will lead to:
The Russian army will reach the borders of countries such as Hungary and Slovakia. The population of these countries, having seen enough of the atrocities of the Russians in Ukraine, will demand from their governments only one thing: to negotiate peace with Putin as quickly as possible and to exclude even the possibility of a Russian attack on these countries. Guess which of the Hungarian and Slovak politicians is well acquainted with Putin and can come to an agreement with him? Of course it's Fico and Orban. These guys will receive total support from their population. (There is no other explanation for Orban’s desire for the fall of Ukraine and the emergence of hordes of orcs on the borders of Hungary). I think there is no need to say what conditions for peaceful coexistence Russia will put forward to these countries. Of course, this will be a withdrawal from NATO. And the people of these countries will willingly agree to this demand, especially after they are convinced of the West’s inability to consolidate in the face of the impending threat.
The problem is not only in Hungary and Slovakia. In every country there are pro-Russian politicians who eagerly await Putin's victory as evidence of the weakness of the West. Take the Czech Republic for example. Pro-Russian sentiments here are no less strong than in Hungary or Slovakia. The same is true in Bulgaria. After Putin’s victory, these politicians will gain an undeniable advantage in a number of countries. These politicians will strive to leave NATO and enter into an alliance with Russia (this is logical, no one wants to be with the loser, everyone wants to be with the winner).
The role of the war in Ukraine in the existence of the Current Order in Europe should not be downplayed. Ukraine's defeat could cause significant changes in eastern Europe.
While I don’t wholly agree with the above being a likely scenario (for example I’m not convinced that any amount of “logical thinking” would lead a country to think leaving NATO will make Russia less likely to invade them), it is undeniably an unpleasant one.
Where I think your argument falls apart is in implying that we should risk actual nuclear war in order to avoid it.
-
17 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:
And if you steer an FPV drone into a Stuke like dive attack, it's just going to spin out of control. There's a reason all those films show them attacking in quite shallow angles.
Sorry, I must have missed something: why can’t FPVs be flown in a steep dive? Why do they “spin out of control”? I assume you don’t mean they enter an actual spin if you try and dive them too steeply, since that would make no sense at all.
-
4 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
I don't like to call Russians "Orks", but this is straight out of Warhammer 40K
This looks like something designed in a Berlin bunker by Ferdinand Porsche, with Hitler drooling over his shoulder throughout. Name it after a rodent and let it join the pantheon of barely mobile, over-armoured, terrible AFV designs of the mid-1940s. As far as I can see it’ll have almost all the same flaws…
-
9 minutes ago, JonS said:
Wouldn't "twice more than" equal 150,000 total?
Yeah, it is ambiguously worded, isn’t it? Unfortunately the interviewer doesn’t seem to have asked for a clarification.
-
3 minutes ago, Carolus said:
Ah, sorry. With vertical panel I meant 90° to the ground.
A panel that is parallel to the ground would be "horizontal" for me.
Ah ok. Yes, me too but it seemed even more counterintuitive that a panel standing upright would be as efficient as an angled one. That’s why I wanted to check.
Even more interesting!
-
54 minutes ago, Carolus said:
It was found in experiments that vertical solar panels offer basically the same energy output as an angled panel.
The reason is that although the panel receives less solar radiation energy, the generated heat can dissipate better, which results in increased efficiency, which brings them up to the same output as an angled panel.
Interesting. By “vertical solar panels” you presumably mean panels laid flat (so ‘pointed’ vertically upwards)?
-
10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Ok, I am still not entirely clear on your theory of change here to be honest. We can focus on C-UAS but then why would we not also focus on UAS themselves for offensive operations as well? Superiority means “freedom of own action while denying same to enemy”. We want to stop their autonomous systems cold and allow ours to maul them with impunity. This gives me deterministic options for both deterrence and compellance. Otherwise I am stopping their UAS cold and then still have to risk human lives to finish them off which is not going to be politically acceptable.
Now if I can demonstrate autonomous unmanned superiority from the outset the war doesn’t even need to start (I.e. deterrence)…no? But superiority has to be for both offence and defence. And offence is going to involve those nasty ones. Fear is the arbiter of these things and our fear of losing lives will likely drive us toward more fully autonomous solutions as opposed to regulating them.
We will likely try to manage these systems under existing LOAC frameworks and create collateral damage calculus to mitigate. Outliers and rogue actors will of course let the damn things off the leash and do all sorts of bad. I honestly do not see a total weapons ban standing (the existing one or a new one) based on the wind direction. Super C-UAS will spin off more super UAS that can go in and do the killing at a distance. The quest will be to the badest complete system on the battlefield.
Ok, well I will have to take the hit on not being fully understood. I will think about it some more. I’m not entirely sure the idea I’m trying to communicate is valuable enough to justify the thread-space it’s consuming, at this point.
-
22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
I think the major flaw here is that somehow we can “routinely counter” unmanned systems to the point that their utility comes into question and therefore the moral ethical “rightness” can hold sway. Like other disruptive technologies unmanned will go far and wide (already has) and likely remain a competitive space for decades, if not centuries. There is no “whelp that was unpleasant” followed by “now we can go back to the way things were”. It does not apply to military application nor regulation.
We cannot unsee or unknow what has already happened. There is no magic wands to make it all go away. Even unmanned counters will remain a highly competitive space where arms races to counter-counters will occur all the time. Hoping that unmanned weapons will somehow disappear is like hoping bullets disappear because we invented body armor.
I appreciate the challenge but their utility doesn't have to be in question any more than any other weapon system. It's their deterministic necessity that undeniably will, one day, be questioned. Not all unmanned systems - I am not saying we try to "go back to the way things were" - but the most egregiously dangerous and offensive ones.
My very first point was a reflection of the fact that C-UAS will absolutely be highly competitive, dynamic, and ever changing. So I mentioned that it might be an idea for forward-thinking nations to focus on autonomous C-UAS now, even more than on autonomous ground-attack drones. Get ahead of the game. Establish and then try to maintain C-UAS superiority. Lead everyone to question the deterministic necessity of these things as soon as possible. Once you do that the imperative to develop and use them is weakened and maybe people will fear the systems more than they will the consequences of not having them. Because, let's be honest, fear is always the arbiter of this kind of thing.
22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:This paradigm shift has been decades in the making. This war has only demonstrated that it has arrived. We will likely try to regulate - hell we try to regulate every new weapons technology, but like air power, cyber and space the punchline is inevitable. So what? Dive into the game and be better and faster than opponents. Blunt the effects and understand what unmanned superiority means. Shape future battlefields now through rapid smart adoption. Not military cultural conservatism or pinning hopes on the “better angels”. We are in a new age of warfare, there is no getting past that. All that remains is how well we can navigate this new reality.
I understand that this has been and still occasionally is challenged, even on this thread. It is not the target of my argument, though. Please, yes, let's navigate this new reality. As a starter for 10, how about we give absolute priority to autonomous C-UAS?
-
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
That is one hopeful theory but I think history is not entirely onside. As we see in Ukraine, warfare is not simply political, it is personal. So if/when an opponent’s unmanned bubble collapses they may very well refuse to accept defeat and fight on. They will do so by various means that will cause you casualties. There will be a lot of pressure to reduce those casualties. Autonomous weapons will be one of the best ways to do this. So I do not see a winning side simply switching modes mid-war.
I totally agree and am focusing on nightmare weapons which hunt down individual human beings in order to kill or maim them. Autonomy against vehicles, factories, equipment and other unmanned systems will be ubiquitous and I think relatively uncontroversial. It's when these things start being used specifically to kill people that the world will cry abomination, just as they have done in the past with other systems that lead to outsized (even if unintended) risk to civilians (cluster munitions, AP mines, etc.) or which offend one too many animalistic sensibilities when they are used (flamethrowers). I understand that none of those weapons were considered deterministic at the time but it's the reaction they induce which I think they will share with human-targeting drones. So, once such drones can no longer be considered deterministic, the momentum could gather to outlaw autonomous targeting of human beings.
All very hopeful, for sure. I am just raising the possibility in light of the fact that the most offensive type of UAS won't be deterministic (and therefore necessary) forever.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:In fact attacks on the will to fight are very often pointed directly at populations…we are literally seeing this unfold everyday in both Ukraine and hr Middle East. So fully autonomous as terror weapons against civilian populations is tragically predictable.
I agree but don't think it will impact the weapons that people try to regulate, once they are not really necessary. Many of the attacks you are referring to are already considered warcrimes, after all...
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:Further, just because one can collapse an opponent’s unmanned systems bubble does not mean it will stay collapsed without destroying that opponent’s ability to access/produce more systems. That will mean attacks on deep industrial infrastructure and varying degrees of resistance. Trying to managed semi vs full autonomy based on ethical grounds in this sort of environment is a challenge few nations will do and even fewer will do well.
Granted. No argument from me against autonomous attacks on infrastructure, etc. My suggestion is that semi-autonomy *could* be reserved for targeting humans in the long term and once C-UAS has become deterministic to the point that whoever wins the C-UAS fight can maintain that dominance and effectively choose whether they use fully-autonomous-hellborn-head-poppers or not.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:And this assumes the war stays a clean standup fight and does not go hybrid. Insurrection, partisan resistance and guerrilla warfare will ensure that fully autonomous stay on the forefront of any modern force. But it will also be very attractive to hybrid resistance for all the same reasons - can’t jam/EW easily, faster and more lethal, range.
This is similar to paxromana's point. Someone, somewhere, will try to autonomously attack men, women and children who wear the wrong type of clothing or use the wrong vowel sounds. I get it. However, if dominant and widespread C-UAS systems exist, then that needn't be a weapon of choice for whichever corner of humanity ethics end up sheltering in. That's all.
My prediction? None of the above will matter and people everywhere will have to live with a permanent new mortal threat vector in their lives. My hope? Once these systems are routinely countered then we'll find a way to discourage or prevent their widespread use in the first place.
-
2 hours ago, paxromana said:
North Korea? Iran> Nutjob Terrorists?
Good luck with that ...
This is true of absolutely everything. If you want to you can argue against trying to control any hazardous substance or unethical weapon based on the argument that ‘the North Koreans won’t listen’. It gets the rest of the world nowhere.
-
10 hours ago, The_Capt said:
And here we have the downward slope. A cheap and effective C-Unmanned system is most likely other autonomous unmanned systems. Having a person in the loop for every c-drone drone, is just going to slow things down and likely give advantage to an opponent.
So my guess we are looking at a fully autonomous forward edge (in 3 dimensions) of fully autonomous systems for peer sides. Those edges will collide and supported by other legacy systems will try and knock each other out. Deep strike plays in here etc. Once a sides bubble collapses...they are dead. Collapse enough bubbles and they lose the war.
So we are back to fully autonomous race to the bottom. A lot of friction in warfare is human-based. Remove the human with a good enough AI and lose the friction. The moral high ground will always give way in the face of existential threats...this is why nukes work.
I don’t think I expressed myself clearly enough.
I fully agree that the best C-UAS is likely to be an autonomous C-UAS drone. My point is, if and when you can field such an effective C-UAS design that the enemy’s UAS are effectively nullified, you have stopped their autonomous attack drones from being deterministic weapons. The ‘do or die’ argument for unrestricted targeting of enemy soldiers, etc. has disappeared. C-UAS is now (arguably) the deterministic system since it basically grants the successful user the choice of how to prosecute the rest of the war. That is when it would be viable, imo, to eschew autonomous targeting of human beings and promote global abandonment of such an idea. Autonomous targeting of other enemy equipment (ships, aircraft, UGVs, etc.) would still be fine - that’s not the animalistic nightmare-inducing stuff. Autonomous targeting of individual people/crowds of people is what could be abandoned and there’s a chance the world might hurry to agree, for once.
-
14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Unmanned systems of all types are deterministic of outcomes.
This is only true until they are countered. The real power play in all this would be to focus almost entirely on an affordable and extremely effective C-UAS system. Once western armies can reliably counter an enemy’s drone fleet then they could take the moral high ground by eschewing autonomous human-hunting killbots (FPVs and autonomous targeting of enemy vehicles are still fair game) and driving a worldwide conversation about everyone else doing the same.
-
3 minutes ago, squatter said:
Yes of course that is true. But unmanned does not equal autonomous. And yes, of course autonomous weapons will offer huge advantages to those who employ them, but at what cost (see video I linked to above.)? Due to the cheapness and ease of manufacture of autonomous killer drones (once the tech has been developed), the implications of their use by bad actors are horrendous.
The world did manage to get some level of control over nuclear proliferation (somewhat latterly and post-hoc) - should we not at aspire to learn the lessons from the successes and failures of nuclear non-proliferation and at least attempt to limit autonomous weapon development?
If we don't then we are heading into an utterly terrifying world, and one most on here seem to have just shrugged and set off down the road towards at the first fork in the road.
I think many countries were probably quite happy to sign up to nuclear non-proliferation given the difficulty and expense involved in setting up your own nuclear arsenal. Also, if anyone tried to breach non-proliferation treaties then there existed the legacy nuclear-armed powers who were able to carry out enforcement.
There will be basically no significant cost/difficulty barrier to establishing an autonomous killer drone fleet, once the technology exists. That means any country will be able to do it almost at will, and, if they do, who would be able to stop them? I think it'd have to be someone with an even bigger fleet, no? Which means that, in this case, I don't think a treaty can work in the way we'd like it to.
Maybe the real answer is to stop thinking about developing multi-layered C-UAS as a way to free up areas to manoeuvre in southern Ukraine and to start considering it a matter of humanitarian necessity.
-
2 hours ago, chrisl said:
If I send up a swarm of drones that are capable of communicating with each other, while not taking input from me, are they not autonomous? If I send up a drone that picks what it's doing based on some pre-determined guidelines and then communicates what it's doing back to me, is it not autonomous?
Autonomy evades certain countermeasures, but doesn't preclude communication. Wouldn't a clever drone herder develop a swarm of drones that had some diverse capabilities? Maybe give 10 or 20% of them a suite of RF sensors and autonomy to go hunt radars and EW systems, while the rest were capable of picking targets on their own, but also at least some rudimentary communication to keep multiple drones from picking the same target if they happen to have comms with their neighbors?
Every time your autonomous drone tries to communicate, my C-UAS system is ready and willing to listen.
I know we've been round the loop a few times but I, for one, enjoy thinking through this puzzle and reading others' thoughts as well. Keep it up.
-
Just riffing a little off what @sross112 was saying, in all these scenarios there has to be some thought given to where we think the UAV-war will find a balancing point. That means that c-UAS is the key.
If we allow ourselves into the world of autonomy making EW all-but ineffective, there are a couple of options with regards to what form c-UAV ends up taking:
- Autonomous c-UAV drones ('fighter' drones) are effective against enemy UAS which fly above the treeline (or any other appreciable ground clutter) but everyone struggles to make them effective against those which are small and/or agile enough to travel amongst trees, hop over people's garden fences, etc. This world means that the compromising effect which UAVs are currently having on efforts to employ legacy systems (towed arty, MBTs, etc) will persist as long as the enemy have low-flying attack UAVs. This, I think, is the world most people on this thread are talking about and is the most likely to result in the most UAV-heavy future force compositions.
- Autonomous c-UAVs quickly gain sufficient sensor/AI levels to be effective against basically all enemy UAVs. You now have a world similar to the WW2 air war where the main battle is for air superiority and then your land forces can engage however they see best. At this point, once you have won air superiority, you ask yourself how best to attack the enemy: other drone designs? HIMARS? any old towed arty lying around? All those will have their pros/cons but you don't need to worry about the enemy UAS threat, at least, so some of them might remain on top tier TOEs.
If ground-based anti-drone sniper units work, then see @The_Capt's thoughts, above - it will compromise UAVs but might do as much or more to compromise other legacy ground units, as well. If innovative forms of camo and concealment prove widely effective against future attack drone AI, that will also change the game.
I think what all of the above probably hinges around most is the size, sensitivity and reliability of passive sensors of all relevant parts of the EM spectrum. If your autonomous UAVs can reliably see your chosen EM frequency at sufficient resolution, then I don't see what will stop AI getting us all to #2, above, pretty damned quickly (as well as probably enabling The_Capt's, nifty ground systems). Perhaps some of our resident subject-matter experts can opine as to whether there are any serious blockers to sensor design in certain parts of the spectrum which could then be exploited as UAV 'blind-spots' by both sides and result in a situation closer to #1?
-
7 hours ago, chrisl said:
I think you're still one dimension away, too. You're starting from "How does my thing work, what can I shoot it at".
From a battlefield perspective, the problem is more of "what am I facing and how do I keep it from getting anywhere near me". And then you develop the ISR and precision to vaporize anything you don't like that acts like it wants to get to close based on what's out there. In doing all of that you're constrained by conservation of energy, but there's a lot of room to work with if you start before anything gets you into its range.
I think I did start from the right place: the "effect" I proposed starting from was intended to mean any relevant effect, including your example of preventing a threat from reaching the battlefield. I admittedly did then leap to a projectile solution due to the nature of the discussion up to that point but I would wholly support your suggestion that the most powerful effects that a weapon designer may seek to achieve are often much further upstream than on the frontline.
-
15 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
Where did you get the idea? They were very effective as tactical bombers, only vulnerable to interceptors due to low speed. Where the enemy air cover was absent or not effective, StuKas worked very well.
Yeah, I went in a little heavy on the Stuka. When left alone to do their job they... did their job. They were good for hitting 100m targets relatively accurately, provided there was no modern or competent airborne opposition. As mentioned in a previous response my point was meant to be that the Stuka's reputation far outweighed its actual effectiveness relative to any other aircraft of its type and I believe that was due to the psychological impact its sirens (and partly its attack profile) had, early war.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
It did seem a little odd for a Ukrainian (however satisfied they may be) to refer to Ukrainians generally as “they”…
As for this:
You are welcome here, as are your opinions, but nobody’s opinion gets a positive response on this thread unless it is supported and contributes to the collective effort to better understand this war. That’s because opinions in isolation are useless; everyone has one, everyone has a right to one, yadda yadda yadda. It’s not opinions but the supporting evidence people provide which results in discussion and other people becoming convinced.