LuckyDog

Another question I don't know the answer to. The consensus of the Thread so far has been that a NATO imposed no-fly-zone poses unacceptable escalatory risks (because it would involve NATO assets shooting down Russian planes). Does that escalatory logic hold now that essentially all (all?) of the Russian incursions into Ukranian airspace are unamanned? Is there strategic room for a more nuanced ruleset - something like, "We, NATO, will shoot down all unmanned aerial objects that are within 10km of a large conurbation or civilian infrastructure target west of the Dniper?

https://forbes.ua/ru/news/ukrainskiy-virobnik-gotue-seriyne-virobnitstvo-analoga-dji-mavic-shmavik-forbes-diznavsya-yogo-kharakteristiki-ta-tsinu-17042024-20603
Via: https://mastodon.social/@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl/112296332321909985
I still don't know why Ukrainians allies don't seem able to get projects like this on the way. The cost of development is a fraction of the cost of a leopard... Peanuts to what else is being sent. 

Many different sources official and unofficial, Russian TG and UKR ATESH underground in Cimea give different information about results. We should wait satellite images. 
Here is General Staff posted a mixed video - at the start we can see probably ATACAMS launches (on one of videos, filmed by locals clearly sounds of multiple cluster minitions explosions are heard), then intensive flashing burning - likely SAM missiles detonate. 
FIRMS map of fire on the airfield

Allegedle (but unverified) photos of destroyed launchers on airfield

Total claimed losses of different sources:
3 S-400 launchers + radar, 2 S-300 launchers, staying under repair in repairing units on airfield, 2 Ka-52 and 2 Mi-28 helicopters seriously damaged, about 30 of personnel killed, 80 wounded. 
GUR claims: 4 S-400 launchers and 3 radars, AD control post, "Fundamnet-M" automatized control complex. 
Russian TG claims: "nothing what can fly wasn't hit"
Last one is on the photo:
 
"Fundament-M" allows to coordinate actions of SAM regiment autimatically in repelling of aerial attack. There are no enough information in open sources about this stuff. First time this system appeared on armament of AD in 2015.

Hmmm we in the UK have personal experience of this and it has cost us dearly. A very expensive mistake...
I hope for the world's sake America takes note that tearing up years of work and cooperation doesn't magically solve anything and creates problems no one was told would happen...

What I find truly amazing are the inconsistencies people are willing to hold so deeply.  For example:
"We can't let in all these immigrants!  They will destroy our nation!"
"Tear the whole system down!"
So on one issue we have to preserve the system while on the other we need to tear it down.  So the real issue is "who" is tearing it down and power distribution post-teardown.  This inconsistency demonstrates what this whole thing is really about and there is little honorable or aspirational about it.  When extremist/reductionist narratives spark up they are filled with these sorts of inconsistencies and paradoxes.

It is potentially worse than that.  This sort of dysfunction does nothing but feed anti-democracy sentiment.  Democracies die due to abandonment, history demonstrates this quite well.  If the system is seen as "unworkable" democracies often choose suicide.  This is the threat to the US and global stability.  Trump and Greene are symptoms of something far deeper and dangerous....apathy that leads to despair.

These fools want the power and respect of being a global superpower and absolutely none of the responsibility. I'm convinced that if Russia rolled into the Suwalki Gap tomorrow that half of the House GOP would refuse to fund the military.

I hereby swear that if M Johnson actually allows for big aid package to Ukraine that I will not call him any more bad names.  Until the next UKR aid package he blocks.  UKR needs this so badly.  I wonder how long before US 155mm & patriot ordnance is actually on site at the front?
 

As a lawyer you should know better that it's much more than just an 'attitude'. It's an entire legal framework underpinning the political ideology of liberal democracy.

Yes the west can sponsor whomever they like, the enemy of my enemy and all that, but there is much more going on here with the particular case of Ukraine because Ukraine has made it no secret that it aspires to joining the EU. As a matter of straightforward facts:-
Ukraine will never join the EU if it does not uphold EU law - indeed it has to adopt EU law in order to be a member. Membership means compliance with the ECHR and its rulings. The ECHR enforces the core principles laid out and agreed upon by the union of liberal democratic states. Some of those principles cover the protection of minority groups and protection of individual freedoms etc.. This is just the way it is. You cannot cherry-pick the core ideas of liberal democracy anymore than you can cherry-pick the legal framework and membership of the EU.          

You do realize that this is basically the same propaganda that Putin uses?
And that is the seed of how war crimes happen.

Children are always innocent. Simple.
Not their fault where they are born.
I strongly suggest you pause your posts on this topic.. 
I have deep respect for you and understand your pov but IMO it's not something for this thread.
I will PM you tomorrow.
 

We're all arguing this on a board that's dedicated to a wargame that has implemented at least some level of autonomy at the small unit level for 20 years.  And made it work in reasonable compute times for battalion sized swarms on computers that were nothing special.  The only thing it doesn't have is the physical sensor inputs, and those are pretty straightforward.  And it was all implemented by Charles and maybe a helper (I haven't kept up).  Charles himself might even count as an autonomous biocomputer, since he's really just a brain in a jar.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.  Missed this one.  So NATO never really had a “Reagan Line”.  It was pretty much “painful tripwires” all the way back to the French border.  The intent was to bleed the Soviets out over the entire distance with a series of defensive positions and fights, shifting efforts to best effect along different axis.  Then when AirLand battle kicked in they matured this to stretching the Soviets out and then hitting them deep to break the system.  Soviet offset was tac nukes.
My sense is, as far as CM can model, the NATO strategy would have worked.  The Soviets likely would have bogged down and run out of gas well before France and the English Channel.  Seven Days to the Rhine was a pipe dream without tac nukes but those weapons would have led to serious escalation risks that no one really wanted to take.  

I guess I have heard from the military conservative school for most of my career...hell at one point I think I was inside it.  They have declared "fad" since 1991 for everything from EBO, RMA and Multi-Domain.  They have also mounted evidence to prove their "rightness".  This war is unique, not only for its time in history, but also what it is demonstrating - just how far war is evolving beyond our former doctrinal status quos.
What we are seeing in Ukraine is not a "fad".  It is fundamental on many levels.

As I see it, UAVs reign as a potential Uber weapon will most likely be short lived. On a macro historical level, I suspect we are in 1915 when the Germans deployed a new Uber weapon and the Allies were panicking:
Fokker Scourge - Wikipedia
UAVs are just a new type of aerial weapon and as we have seen over the past 100 years, there has been a constant back and forth between offensive and defensive weapon systems.
Most likely the same general types of defensive systems are being developed:
1. ground based AA defenses: radar/guns/missile/EW to detect and shoot down UAVs before they can reach their targets;
2. air based defenses: fighters/ hunter-killer drones to hunt UAVs in the air and shoot them down.
Most likely within the next 5-10 years, we will have reached the same equilibrium we currently see in traditional aerial warfare.

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. 
 
Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. 
 
Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60
Dave

This is such a weird take to me as to be somewhat incomprehensible. Like, we seem to be operating in different factual universes. Italians bogged down in Albania? How is that an apt comparison?
What particular weapons systems are we depleting the reserves of? We've been culpably stingy with our second and third tier weapon systems. Your points contradicts one another. If China is learning to fight a western military that doesn't use any of its airforce, any of its modern deep strike capability, any of its naval capability, any of its modernized mech force... learn on, I guess?
On the contrary, everyone is learning that the shape of the battlefield has changed, and changed in ways that seriously favor the defender. The PLAN has to be looking at the videos of the SeaBaby double taps and thinking hard about what their losses crossing the Taiwan strait would look like.
Everybody is looking at the rise of low-energy precision fires and wondering how totally that's broken mechanized mass.
Everybody is looking at the totally illuminated battlefield and wondering how complete their ground-to-space ISR system is.

It looks like they have the armored clown car bug from CM:BO.  
Please fix or do somefink!

Agreed. I certainly had no intention of casting stones, which is precisely why I used the issues Canada had with the Airborne Regiment as an example in my original post yesterday.
I also did not mean to imply that NATO and allied armed services don't still have a lot of room for improvement on screening out extremism within the ranks, as both your examples demonstrate, just that it is a goal worth striving for...

Oh for principled leaders like this today… certainly not a loser in my opinion 
 

Per Baneman.....
 
 
Russian staff school forgot to mention this was supposed to be a joke. I do think Black Adder's prescription for the morale problem is dead on though, in the Russian context.

This little mini documentary shows how lucky Wittmann was.
Excellent work by the tank museum!!!!

It's ironic that you exactly prove your point by posting an outrage-farming video by someone with a clear political bias watching a video by someone else with a political bias (who misrepresents what people say and asks leading questions) rather than actual data. I will not discuss US politics as I am not American, it is off-topic and it will just lead to a ****-show, so consider this post in the vein of how to form evidence-based opinions, which has been a central point of discussion over the past few pages.
Here is an actual study on this topic. Note how they outline their methodology and openly discuss the limitations of the study. You are also free to decide for yourself if these are meaningful when spread out over the entire population (though you would really need to look more closely at local situations given the way the electoral system works).
WHO LACKED PHOTO ID IN 2020?: An Exploration of the American National Election Studies

considering the disparity in resources, i wonder how the price war is affecting Russia's ability to purchase munitions.  China for one has got to wonder about
1. Sanctions if selling to Russia.
2. The more lucrative possibilities of selling to the west.
- assuming China is an actual resource for selling munitions.

Russian T-62 (?) in tsar-coup-cage and camo