hcrof

I think the problem here is that 2 years into the war Ukraine still only has a handful of brigades who actually fight. The line units and TD formations have not been developed into fighting units and trusted with hot areas of the front. I wonder if our Ukrainian friends can confirm my my suspicions? And if this is the case, why?

All good points, I also wonder whether going straight at the ship leaves a wake which is easy to see in the dark. By manoeuvring erratically the wake will be obscured by waves and so the drone will be hard to spot, even with image intensifiers.

I have noticed that sea drones tend to have a very odd attack pattern where they never go in straight lines and also attack one-by-one. This video shows drones almost making 90degree turns only a few hundred meters from its target. It looks inefficient but it clearly works, does anyone know more?

I don't think this actually responds to what I said. Rather than derail this thread however, I will direct you to this discussion which I think sets out my position better than I could: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cr2ly/why_would_france_think_that_something_like_the/

But the Maginot line worked exactly as intended. It allowed France to man it's German border with lightly armed reservists and concentrate it's best troops against the actual location of the German attack. Their defeat in 1940 was due to other factors which we don't need to discuss in detail here.

I don't want to defend the guy, and would never watch his show, but didn't he work for fox news for years? You would have thought he would remember to come prepared, even if he was planning an easy interview.

Most things people consider AI right now, from self driving cars to chatGPT is almost as hard to understand as giving someone a brain scan to ask why they like the colour pink. The code is simpler than you would think, but the "thought process" is almost totally opaque. A major area of AI research right now is trying to get it to explain why it did stuff in a way we understand

It seems that at least some Russians have come to similar conclusions about war as this forum: https://www.armystandard.ru/news/2024129114-TnO1s.html No comment really, except that we should not stereotype the Russian general staff as a bunch of drunks and incompetents stuck in the soviet past. They are learning, even if implementation is the hard part, not theory.

I have seen British troops train with ladders, which can also be used as bridges across an alley. Not saying I would volunteer mind, I would prefer the baseball sized boom-drones going in first. Also, wasn't black hornet developed for urban warfare, to check round corners and in buildings for ambushes and booby traps?

I also believe that coming in from the top flushes the enemy into the street... Where you have a pre-planned kill zone.

Also, I imagine that it would not be immediately obvious you are under fire too since there would be no bullet crack (a faint pop and a burning smell maybe? Maybe nothing if the impact is far behind you) You would probably get a second shot in before the enemy understood they were a target (especially if you miss).

On the topic of mobilization and Ukrainian civil society.

I think a big difference here is that a tiny country like Serbia had no hope to resist US airstrikes. It was effectively a form of gunboat diplomacy, where a great power can coerce a smaller one because of the overwhelming power difference. Where the two powers are more equal, such as in WW2 or now, bombing as a form of coercion will be counterproductive since the victim of the bombing simply wants to get revenge. This goes double when Russia perceives itself as the stronger power. I would suggest Ukraines best strategy is to bomb targets specifically to cause divisions in society, such as oligarchs homes like last year or symbolic targets. Making a few towns go dark and shutting down major airports etc would also cause general irritation at the war, without the same anger as killing civilians.

Based on the news this morning I guess we will see whether Ukraine will follow through on it's threats to Russian infrastructure or not. Personally I wouldn't mind a few Russian towns going dark but I really don't think Ukraine is ready to do that yet.

Do we/Russia know for sure Ukraine can follow through on those threats? I have seen lots of talk about Ukrainian shahed equivalents but not a lot of hard numbers and effectiveness.

I really don't think Russia is dissuaded by threats like that. A combination of poor information supplied to decision makers and hubris would means the threat has to be almost nuclear before they will be dissuaded. I just think the whole infrastructure campaign didn't work well last year and the defences in Ukraine only got better, so they are trying to rebuild their stockpiles of missiles for something else.

If this peace offer from Putin on current front lines is genuine it certainly explains why the Russians are so keen to push Ukraine out of avdiivka and the dneipr salient at any cost. Those two areas would be serious problems in a 2015- style semi frozen conflict or even a Korea style armistice. That also explains why it is so important for Ukraine to keep them and not retreat, even if it means taking losses.

I think using distributed drones it would take much longer so the tactics would need to change. You might need to map out many potential breach zones to keep the enemy guessing which area being snooped by drones is the one that will be attacked. You might try to scan at night, or in heavy fog, or while the defender is distracted by something else. The exploding part would be faster though, and much more surprising since a bunch of drones will appear out of nowhere and then your minefield blows up moments before the first vehicle hits the breach. Not like watching a heavy vehicle trundle towards the minefield, flinging a charge, waiting for it it settle, it exploding, and then all the vehicle that were kept safely out of range of that massive explosion drive towards the breach.

I am quoting Steve but this is a general comment: isn't a line charge just dumb mass? You don't need hundreds of kg of explosives if you drop a small charge on every mine individually and that means you can clear a wider path with fewer assets. Sure you might miss some but it is not like a line charge is 100% effective either. The key is to adequately map the field first but I am sure a combination of ground penetrating radar, infra red, LiDAR etc combined with clever post-processing would do the trick.

I think that specialised breaching vehicles are more or less non-viable right now. They will likely be spotted and become target number 1 for a whole suite of very long range precision weapons even before the breach gets started. The alternative is small cheap (obviously) drone breachers that can clear mines with explosive charges. They can be moved up in secret and if you lose a bunch then just employ more and then push the wrecks out of the way with a dozer tank/ifv when you actually move through. They can also be kept on hand in a distributed fashion to deal with artillery laid mines.

What I am not seeing here is how to deal with the fact that if you mass for a breach you will get spotted, then the enemy has time to prepare (by shelling the breaching vehicles and/or fuelling up helicopters). It seems to me the jump teams (which can start dispersed) have got to be doing quite a bit of work sanitising the area before you can breach, then you end up breaching slowly because you just can't concentrate valuable equipment before it becomes himars/lancet fodder. Your drone defence will have to be airtight too.

Interesting, but I flat out don't believe those figures are KIA only. I read them as "non-recoverable losses". Still, it does suggest that Moscow has taken an eye-watering number of casualties in this war.

Looks like the polish border is unblocking. Still a way to go but the polish government appears to be making a sincere effort to resolve the crisis.

Sorry, can you point out the bit where they said the border would be blocked? As far as I can see they will "increase checks". If that is what it takes to stop the truckers from blocking the border then that would be good for Ukraine. And noone said how extensive these checks will be.

Agreed but that author (Aslund) lives in copium land IMO. He has not got a great track record of predicting the Russians are gonna collapse any day now, and I label him as a propagandist more than a serious journalist.