Livdoc44

Free e-book: War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World (Project MUSE - War in Ukraine (jhu.edu))
Found this e-book which is a collection of essays on the invasion (it's from John Hopkins University, released under a Creative Commons licence). The contents and authors are:
The Ukraine War and Global Order => Hal Brands

1 Ukraine, Russia, China, and the World => Stephen Kotkin
2 Why Putin Invaded Ukraine => Michael McFaul and Robert Person
3 Strategic Fanaticism: Vladimir Putin and Ukraine => Lawrence Freedman
4 The Failure to Deter: US Policy toward Ukraine and Russia from the End of the Cold War until February 24, 2022 =>
Michael Kimmage
5 How the War Will End => Anne Applebaum
Part ii: The Conflict
6 The Russia-Ukraine War: Military Operations and Battlefield Dynamics => Michael Kofman
7 Russian Military Resilience and Adaptation: Implications for the War in Ukraine and Beyond => Dara Massicot
8 Planning for the Worst: The Russia-Ukraine “Tiger Team” => Alexander Bick
9 US Strategy in Ukraine => Kori Schake
10 Nuclear Lessons and Dilemmas from the War in Ukraine => Francis J. Gavin
11 Fallacies of Strategic Thinking in the Ukraine War  => Thomas G. Mahnken and Joshua Baker
Part iii: Global Dimensions and Implications
12 The Ukraine War and Global Cleavages => Ashley J. Tellis
13 Putin’s Point of No Return  => Andrea Kendall-Taylor
14 Accelerating Profound Changes Unseen in a Century: Chinese Assessments of and Responses to Russia’s Invasion 
of Ukraine  => Bonny Lin and Brian Hart
15 The European Union as a War Project: Five Pathways toward a Geopolitical Europe => Mark Leonard
16 Lose-Lose: The Economic Sanctions of the Russo-Ukrainian War => Daniel W. Drezner
17 America’s Global Role in the Shadow of the Ukraine Conflict => Peter D. Feaver and William Inbode
It's 300-odd pages long in total, but each chapter is it's own essay which should make it a little less daunting. Some distinguished names have contributed; Laurance Freedman, Anne Applebaum, Dara Massicot, Kofman.
I've only read the first few chapters but so far, so good.
 
 

This is the key point to take away from the rather tedious past couple days on this thread.
The challenging part is that propagandists can come up with reams and reams of verbose, officious-sounding nonsense much faster than anyone can challenge it. This was already the case before large language models made it trivial to create pages of vaguely reasonable-sounding claptrap at the push of a button. Now it is worse. And when those propagandists are also working for authoritarian states that exercise near-totalitarian controls over the media landscape within their borders, they are also able to capture plenty of real-life stories that support the views they want to shape, while suppressing the spread of content that does not.
Out here in the actually-free world, the propaganda coming from these authoritarian government mouthpieces seems laughably ineffective. How could anyone believe something that is such unabashed, unadulterated, full-blown propaganda? They're not even pretending it's otherwise! And yet, people believe it. "Free thinkers" with chips on their shoulders about their own government get bamboozled into believing that they are the ones living in an authoritarian state, actually. And then the "news" coming out of other authoritarian states can surely be no more fake than their own news, and, by the way, what is news other than propaganda, at the core? There are no facts, only interpretations, you see. This is why I don't mind you doubting. What is truth, anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?
It is depressing how many people fall into this hole.
This is not only why it is important to counter the Kremlin's lies, but also to consistently push back against the same kind of democracy-eroding rhetoric coming from media and political figures in parts of the world where there still is freedom of expression and freedom of association and so on. The people pushing it tend to either be useful idiots, or privileged enough (through age, wealth or power) to be insulated from the consequences. In both cases, not the best folks to be looking toward to inform your view of the world.

On victory and defeat - because it is the basis of so much “proof” on the opposing sides of this thing.  In warfare victory and defeat are very slippery concepts.  One can win a war by all metrics and wind up losing in the long run (see European Allies after WW1 and 2).  The vice versa is also possible (see Japan).  So whenever someone jumps in with the “Ukraine is obviously losing, Russia is winning” or vice versa, without clearly defining what that means, I get suspicious.
For now the best way to try and determine what victory/defeat means in this war, one needs to come to a common understanding of what the initial political and strategic goals of this war for each side were and were not.
When I am looking at the “winning/losing” equation I am using the following objectives.
For Ukraine:
- the survival of the state as independent and sovereign.
- the creation of a narrative of effective resolve and resistance that draws in international support.
- shape and set the conditions for enduring security integrity at wars end (this one is key to effective reconstruction and recovery).
For Russia:
- the complete political absorption control of Ukraine as a vassal state or sub-state.
- a clear demonstration of Russian power within its Near Abroad designed to push back on Western encroachment and reinforce the notion that other states within this region need to “stay in line”.  This one plays to both external and internal audiences.
- any and all erosion of NATO unity and resolve, as well as a draw back of US influence in the region.
For the West (we often forget we have a win/lose calculus here as well):
- A clear demonstration of the western rules based international order.  Russia must be forced to get back in line and face punitive measures for an illegal invasion that violates the rules we constructed.  To this end we support Ukraines objectives; however, we do not need all of them in full to achieve ours. We do need a clear demonstration of western unity and resolve as a foundational underpinning for that western rules based order.
- Any opportunities to expand western influence and control - see Sweden and Finland.
- the reduction of Russia as a security threat to Europe and globally.
- Avoid a catastrophic collapse of Russia at all costs as it would make the overall regional situation, and possibly global one much worse.
You will note that for me none of these are tied directly to lines on the ground.  I do not believe that where this war ends drive those strategic objectives (within reason of course - if Russia takes Kyiv the viability of Ukrainian state is greatly diminished).  
By my metrics, Russia has already pretty much “lost” this thing.  They can hold onto to what they have now but none of their strategic objectives are accomplished.  They end the war in worse position than when they started it.  Their only Hail Mary is that western support and attention dries up over time and they can exploit that to try and pull this one out of the dumpster.  The odds of full Russian control over Ukraine by this point are pretty damn low.  Much worse than at wars beginning.
Ukraine has two out of three, that last one of setting conditions for enduring security has not been accomplished. Ukraines long game is to enter into western economic and security mechanisms.  They definitely have earned that but we have the thorny issue of Russia still able to make trouble and project that into Ukraine.  We can live with a level of this a la South Korea, but I suspect we will need this thing to hold more water to work.
The West is doing well but we are not there yet, and things could still go bad quickly.  We definitely have shored up influence, control and unity. And we have managed to reduce Russian threats pretty significantly as the Russian military has been shattered. What we do not have are the conditions for long term stabilization. Russia is neither a zero-threat nor stable in the long term.
So to summarize…on victory/defeat so far:
Russia - nope.
Ukraine - OK, but not there yet.
West - meh, so long as we don’t blow the whole thing up.
I hope this is useful for the next time someone rolls through here with “well obviously Russia is winning” due to some headline about a tactical twitch somewhere.  They likely are not using the same metrics I do and in many cases have ulterior motives for painting this war in a certain light.

Supposedly russia broke their record with confirmed vehicle losses in a single day. 

Some stuff here today.  Interesting piece about RU payola to folks in EU to spread propaganda.  I've seen reports (let's call this rumor for now) that Mike Johnson is getting campaign funds from a lobbying group funded by an RU oligarch --  I don't know this will turn out to be true, we'll see.  When we saw Tucker C, Sen. Rand Paul, et al, spewing RU talking points verbatum (sp?), it does make one wonder.  And some RU stuff blowing up -- a lot of RU stuff.  I am shocked at how I can now laugh at men being killed.  Even completely untouched by this war I am becoming jaded.  I am glad these RU soldiers won't be able to cause more murder and mayhem, but I am still surprised at how callous I have become.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/31/2232580/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Russia-s-biggest-armored-assault-of-the-war-ends-in-bavovna?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
On another subject, I lit into SFHand in an earlier post.  Probably too much.  Working 60 hr week (literally) and I take a couple minutes to pop in to get some UKR news and I have to wade thru that nonsense.  Kinda made me testy.  

Well, the 'Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan' was ultimately forced out when their air supplied FOBs became untenable.
The biggest kick in the ntz will come though when Ivan's rail network goes down. Shoulda been done long ago, IMHO, by any means necessary, but as the pros remind us, easier said than done.

Have you read the thread from day 1? The amount of open source information here - from all imaginable perspectives - is enormous. Historians will be able to make much more sense of this war than any in history. Would that we had this sort of information for the ancient world! Or the Battle of Midway!

My knowledge is anecdotal from when I was in an F-4 B Squadron in the Fleet Marine Force, Western Pacific (WESTPAC) in 1970 and 1971. Our pilots had a “club” called the Caterpillar Club. The only way one could become a member was to eject from an aircraft. Every pilot I knew, who was a member, had back issues.

Oftentimes the reactions are very predictable and pretty obviously the goal of the attackers.  The Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber are examples of that.  The two guys who got caught trying to blow things up may have thought that they were going to damage something and kill a bunch of people, but whoever set them up wasn't expecting that.  Neither one of them was going to damage anything - they were set up to get caught hiding explosives in ways that would cause the US and much of the world to inflict all sorts of disruption on itself.  Had they actually blown up the aircraft over ocean it's likely that the root cause would have never been found. But by under-arming them and making sure they got caught, they gave the DHS another thing to freak out over and add ineffective disruptions to try to mitigate.  That would have failed the goals of whoever set them up.  The reaction to both of those was entirely predictable and we still disrupt our air travel to try to detect copycats to this day.

So, now we have details of today's missile strike on Kyiv. Today was a Day of SBU, so Russians obviously decided to shedule the strike for this date. When I wrote about allegedle strike on Kyiv hydro power plant I was wrong - it just features of Kyiv terrain can in this way reflect sounds, that you could think something exploded near you, but indeed it was in other place. Espacillay if explosion took place high in the air. 
So, Russian TG today drowned in extasy how their missiles destroyed buildings of SBU (building of SBU "was filled with personnel"), GUR (hey! They already two times destroyed this building in own reports!), "quarter of dormitories for GUR officers" (and showed a photo of smoke over old Khrushchov time houses - idiots, do they rellay think GUR oficers, elite, live in dormitories with cucroaches?), underground weapon factory and Patriot battery in Zhuliany airport.
All this with two missiles %) 
Real damage here. Both missiles were shot down, but since these were newest hypersonic missiles "Zirkon", their fragments with high kinetic speed flew around the city and fell down in four districts.
Students of Fine Arts and Design univercity have strong angelic protection - a large fragment of missile destroyed their sport hall - nobody was killed. Russians claimed the missile destroyed Civil Defense HQ, deployed in the same building, but as you can see there are no trails of explosion or falme, even windows mostly intcat. Just huge kinectic strike, which ruined old brick building.  

Other large fragment of missile fell down between private houses in SW outskrirt of the city In Zhuliany and makes deep crater (aha! this is "underground factory"! Or Patriot was here?)

And here is fragment of 3M22 "Zirkon" missile. First time it was launced on Kyiv on 6th of Feb. It's unknown either it was just missed or it trajectory was shifted by close Patriot missiles explosion (or it was damaged by SAM), but then it fell down between two malls, accidentally causing damage to underground water pipes, electricity cables and tram ways. 
"Zirkon" overcame the distance between Crimea and Kyiv for 3 minutes. They were launched more likelu with ground launchers, though it was intended as anti-ship missile for Russian frigades "Admiral Gorshkov"-class. It has declared speed 8-9M, the range more 1000 km and 300-400 kg of warhead (probably 150 kg of HE). This missile flies on the height 30-40 km and Russians claim they have maneuver capabilities. Then on approach to the target, the missile dives almost like ballistic and hit.  

 

Well, we can shoot dawn this new wunerwaffe. It's good. But Kyiv now will be under threat of strikes with this weapon and this is bad. After today's atatck 10 citizens were injured, traumatized or just got high strees. But only two of them were hospitalized

Attackers were Tajiks, they are not Caucausins. Tajikistan rejected these men were their citizens, because they already long time lived in Russia and got Russian citizenship  - some of them on the eve of attack. But in Russia, especially in Moscow there are huge number of Tajiks live, involved in unqualified work - building, couriers, garbagers, janitors etc. They are not so warlike, dare and agressive like Chechens and Dagestanians, who can shoot with firearms in the center of Moscow or block the roads during marriages and police will afraid to react. Russians often treat Tajik and Uzbek workers as own servants or even slaves (oh, yeah Russians very like to be in role of "white masters" in front of non-white people - you can see alot of videos with behavior of Russian tourists in Egypt or Turkey). They can easy to offend them and even to beat up Tajik couriers if he late, for example. But in last time Middle-Asian migrants became to unite in some sort of fraterneties, and became to develop aggression to Russians, taking an example from Caucasians. In some Russian scholls already most of pupils are not Slavic, but Middle-Asians and Caucasians, so Russian kids more and more encounter with Muslim bulling and this cause a response - the growing of skinheads and other similar movements. 
Among Russians already many aggressive comments in social media concerning Tajiks, so with time this mutual tensions will just grow more and more. Like and in other countries, encountering with sharp increasing of alien-culture population share    

This is where cultural differences come into play. You thinking like a westerner that has to be consistent in what hes saying. You don't get that this isn't the case in russia. The bigger the confusion the bigger the control. This is why i say that they will make twist on this that in the end will make no sense. Cause if its make no sense you will only remember the calling words. Ukraine was involved, and the feeling you should have that is hate. Every aspect of russian propaganda is based on building down rationality and enforcing emotional response. They aware that its hard influence rational peoples so they don't need them. They need instinct driven animals.
It does not matter that it was a fault of their home defense service. Cause they will not be held responsible.
The other thing is the narrative. It does not matter.  really don't want to come with cliches but in 1984 there is a scene where they have the two minutes of hate. You know the story in the first part of the two minutes they saying one thing and in the end they say the exact opposite. Its true today as well. There are some peoples in the russian society that can have individual opinion and some influence but usually they are far away in Ukraine. Those back home are don't have influence or first hand experience to know what its true. Its an alternative reality. So it does not matter if the narrative does not fit the picture, only that it push the right button on the primitive parts of the human brain.

First, US support has not completely broken down. $3 billion is being disbursed now and another $300 million is shortly to follow. In addition, while there is a deadlock now doesn't mean it will continue as long as Biden is in the WH and the Senate remains non-crazy. At this very moment, a motion to vacate has been tendered on Johnson and it's quite likely that the price of Dem support to keep him in place is going to be a clean vote on Ukraine aid. To say the "US does nothing" isn't just extremely not factual...it actually hurts your argument in DC because the MAGA folks can point to that sort of talk and say "See? Whatever we do is never going to be enough". I feel and sympathize with your frustration but the old saw about babies and bathwater applies.  
And to the original point, a big spike in energy prices *would* make the job of Ukraine aid deniers *easier*. It would be strategic malpractice to pretend otherwise. 

I just read up on that Aeroscope system and it's the most Chinese **** ever. They're not only not hiding the CCP backdoor, but they've productized it so they can make money on both sides! Get that bag, I suppose, but to my eyes it instantly makes DJI a non-starter for anything outside of hobbyist stuff.
Thanks for sharing that webinar. It was sales-y, but it really drives home the sad state of affairs when they're promoting the security angle of dumping the raw footage to SD card while remaining evasive on the live feed question ("well it's downsampled anyway, so it's not the good stuff"). I was hanging for a more detailed description of the technology they're using to communicate from the drone to the controller, but it appears "security through obscurity" is still the name of the game here. Or perhaps the industry really just takes it as a baseline assumption that the live feed is open, which is bananas to me.
Perhaps for suicide drones it would be okay to skip encryption on the video feed, if it excessively increases the heat and battery drain, or if the lag sucks too bad. It sounds like these things might soon fly autonomously or be carried inside a mothership to a waypoint in the vicinity of the target and only switch over to direct human control for the final targeting and approach, which hopefully would be at a high enough speed that anyone intercepting the feed would not have time to react. There's still a risk if the enemy collect enough of these final approach feeds that they can determine the flight path of the mothership, or extrapolate where you are launching from, but I suppose that's the same risk that exists with artillery.
The spy/recon/overwatch drones, on other hand - the ones that hopefully are going to fly back to base at the end of their mission - those seem like a priority for loading up with all the security. We keep talking on this thread about how maneuver is dead because everyone can see everything going on for miles around, but if everyone is watching everyone else's video feed then what's actually dead is opsec. You can't give people your intel for free, at least make them put up a drone of their own to get it, you know?
In any case, it seems I have been a bit too presumptuous about how all this gear works. I am definitely biased by my experience of living in China and going to various lengths trying to 翻墻 (jump the Great Firewall), and now working in the internet privacy and security space. When there's bombs raining down on your head then nerding out over encryption is probably less important than trying to take out the source ASAP. On one hand I hope I never have to experience that. On the other hand, here in Taiwan, who knows? I hope to not be completely ignorant if **** hits the fan, so I appreciate any wisdom people can share here on the thread.

I read an interesting discussion with a Russian guy who had grown up in the USSR, with him being unable to understand how anyone would ever vote against whoever was in power. His thinking was that the president could order people to vote for him, and not doing so would be insubordination and get punished. And this worked all the way down the chain: officials at various levels, police, judiciary, election organisers, all follow their orders because not doing so would lead to punishment from above.
People tried to explain that in an established democracy it doesn't work like that. The fundamental difference is that (almost) everyone believes in the the rule of law. There are laws around how to hold fair elections, and anyone violating the laws to try and fix the result is very likely to face punishment. His counter was always "but why wouldn't the authorities just order people not to punish the rule breaking and punish the people trying to do things 'fairly'".  He couldn't seem to wrap his head around the idea that once there is a critical mass of people who follow the rule of law, anyone trying to break the law to fix an election is very much taking a big risk and on their own Anyone who might shield them from consequences becomes liable to consequences from higher up, up to an including the supreme court (or equivalent) and police who aren't under the power of politicians and protected from the consequences of following the law rather than the whims of the head of state.
So in an established democracy, enough people believe in the rule of law, following the law shields you from punishment, and anyone trying to subvert that is knowingly taking a risk that might well get them punished - even the people tyring to subvert the rule of law work on the assumption that the rule of law holds sway and that they are violating societal norms.
In Russia, from what this guy is saying, enough people believe that following orders from above  is what shields you from punishment, and following what the law says rather than what you are told to do is going to get you punished. Trying to follow the law and disobey the wishes of the president is what is violating societal norms, and is the same kind of conspiratorial risk-taking in Russia that trying to steal an election would be in an established democracy.
It was an interesting insight into his mindset that he just couldn't make the mental leap to understand how a society might function where everyone (or close enough to everyone to count) valued following the law more than following orders, and that was what protected people. He always fell back on "but what if someone punished them for that".
So yeah, democracy does kind of require a society built on the foundation  that democracy works and the rule of law reigns, and it is a self-sustaining system that functions very differently to the culture that the USSR and Russia had (and probably had before the USSR as well form what I gather)
 

I don't have a Telegraph sub so I can't read the article but while Macron's shift is surprising...LePen's is far more surprising still. If I were a betting man, I would throw some kopecks on the square that says that the French government came into possession of some information regarding Moscow's efforts to undermine the government that shocked and that information exposed the LePen and her cohorts in such a way that they had to make a swift and decisive choice. 
Watch this space. 
 

It is a weird artifact of the current analytical milieu that while everyone has an opinion about the dire effects of loss in Ukraine on the West, nobody spends much time thinking about what a loss would mean for Russia. It's especially odd when we have a recent example of what happens to a post Soviet era successor regime that fails in absorbing a neighbor. I'm talking about, of course, post Gulf War Iraq. 
Putin might hold on. He might manage to stave off further dissolution of state. But the general situation would be a parlous existence of continued sanctions, hostile and well armed neighbors, continued demographic decline and the political evaporation of the Russkiy Mir. In fact, this is exactly what will happen in pretty much every outcome except a decisive victory for Moscow. 
Russia must stay on offense for many of the same reasons Germany did in WWI and if it loses is likely to in a similar way.
 
 
 
 

So, reading the last couple of pages, here's how I'm reading the argument about western and soviet legacies. To succeed tactically on the modern battlefield, an army needs to establish fires superiority and ISR superiority (which involves denying both to the enemy and securing both for friendly operations). The legacy Soviet and legacy Western took different paths to achieving those two superiorities, albeit with some overlap. Neither seems workable on the modern battlefield.
The legacy western system relied on ranged precision systems to deliver fires. So, Excalibur, Javelin, HIMARS, Tomahawk, HARM, and the like. The legacy western system relied on dismantling the enemy's fires complex. This is a sort of pre-emptive counter battery, where we identified fires systems and targeted them as a precursor to tactical engagement.
"Air Superiority" is a misnomer. It's really ISR and fires superiority delivered by primarily airborne systems. One thing on the table now is whether the western fires superiority system can dismantle an opposing fires complex. We built our fires complex to targeting large, hot, heavy systems, not now a fires complex is much more distributed and made of much less energetic bits. Targeting a Pantsir? Doable. Targeting two guys with a backpack full of drones? Harder.
The legacy soviet system relied on mass to deliver fires. TOS-1, Grad, the abundance of tube artillery. The legacy soviet system relied on overwhelming the enemy's counterbattery complex to secure fires in a competitive environment. 
The legacy western system relied on airborne ISR to establish superiority, and on airspace denial to inhibit enemy airborne ISR. The legacy soviet system relied on recon in force (?) to establish ISR superiority, and on airspace denial to inhibit enemy ISR. These have both been blown up by high speed battlefield networking (!) and plentiful drones. Nobody has any idea how to deny dronespace. Also, the Russians appear to be using waves of expendable soldiers as a form of reconnaissance, which is horrifying, but appears to be sort of effective?
More to ponder here, and whatever system ends up able to deliver fires and ISR won't look like either the legacy western or legacy Soviet system, because the physics and geometry of a modern battlefield are so different.

For those interested in listening in on two world leaders talk about Ukraine before the war. More to follow....
 
 

The thing to understand right now is that the Speaker already has no authority. His sole leverage is that nobody wants to go through another debac-tacular leadership election again. And with Buck's retirement and NY23 coming up, the Republican margin will be down to 1 vote for a while. It will then go back up to...2. So, there is little Johnson can do to punish recalcitrant members and plenty they can do to ruin his day, every day.  
The inescapable fact the derives from the above is that there is no plan or agreement. Johnson is a cipher...and Trump's cipher at that...in the House. He has no party loyalty to rely on (as Jefferies does) and his team is made up of pols who have more experience, cliques that support them, etc (i.e. Scalise, Jordan). What plan there is, is simply to stymie aid as long as possible because that's what Trump wants. Thus, the discharge petition.
To the vote, that the discharge petition is even happening tells you it has legs and in this case there are actually two (one from a Democrat and one from a Republican) but it is a hard road to travel and it takes time. How would the vote go? You probably lose about 10 to 15 Democrats but you also probably gain 70 to 100 Republicans. If the vote were a secret ballot, you probably would get 150 plus. Ukraine aid is that rare thing...it is truly popular and bipartisan. If they get the discharge to the finish line, it almost certainly passes...Johnson be damned. 

Crash site of IL-76, which fell down near Ivanovo. Some Russian TGs claimed that unknown passengers, who were onboard, were crewmen of A-50. Ivanovo-Severnyi airfield is a base of 610th Center of combat usage and flight personnel retrain, having in own composition IL-76 and A-50 planes, some of which are strored. If this is true, IL-76 crash can be a diveriosion to eliminate A-50 pilots and operators, which probably flew to bring into exploitation A-50, repaired from the storage to substitute previous losses
Reportedly (but not verified) in result of drone strikes on Beriyev aviation plant in Taganrog two A-50 (one of them - that which suffered from small drone attack in Belarus), staying under repar in hangar got additional damages and have taken out for unknown time.

Mother Of All Bowel movements 
 

Hi,
As a Swede I thought today would be a good day to stop lurking for a bit and drop a comment. Been playing cm for 20 years and following this forum for a long time.
Thank you all for contributing to this thread, checking it daily. Always a good source for news and discussion, so much knowledge and experience gathered is hard to get elsewhere. 
I always was all for our countrys neutral stance combined with a strong Defense but last decade has of course swayed us all in Sweden a bit. I have my background in the army, cv90. Seeing us finally start to retake our capabilities regarding defense is good.
Anyways thanks for having us in the club I guess (why am I thinking about brothers Marx)?
Carl 

I am honestly amazed that anything I write causes anyone to think about anything “all day”, but that must be the pressure of Canadian culture.
I think “unmanned” as a phenomenon is the continuing emergence of something larger within warfare.  What you describe here would be big enough to drive significant re-thinking of how we wage war.  Since the beginning of this war, I have noted how many really fundamental concepts are being impacted: Mass (density, concentration of force), Offensive, Surprise, Connections, Speed (space and time) and Friction, to name several.  These definitely signal a shift in the character of warfare.  A change to the fundamental capability of infantry is enormous - on par with shifts we have seen in the last 200 years.
But I honestly think it may be bigger.  Most military technology has been developed to better project or protect human energy in the use of violence to shape human will.  Rocks, spears, bow/arrow, horses, armor, chariots, walls, siege weapons, guns, artillery, air power and seapower - all designed around the human being.  However, as Clausewitz (and others) have argued, these are all shifts in the “character” of warfare, not its fundamental nature.
A shift in the nature of warfare has occurred at least twice in human history.  The first time was when we invented civilization and made warfare an extension of human politics.  Before, in pre-civilization, warfare occurred for what could be considered micro-political reasons but was also occurring for many other reason as well, the largest being survival.  By upscaling warfare..in fact as a direct result as a pre-condition to upscaling itself, warfare changed to become an “act of violence to force political will”.  Political will changed with civilization and so did war.  
The second time the nature of warfare changed was in 1945.  The creation and operationalization of nuclear weapons changed the nature of warfare forever.  The nature of warfare became “an act of viable violence to force political will”.  War became bounded by the nuclear equation.  Unlimited violence meant mutual destruction, so we were forced to view all war through a different lens. This new nature of warfare exists to this day.
Now we are staring down the barrel of something else.  And what this is exactly, I am not sure.  We are essentially seeing technology augmenting and replacing human cognitive processing power.  This has been happening for centuries but “unmanned” by definition is about replacing human beings.  The larger question with “unmanned” is how far down this road does that replacement go?  At a very high expression, unmanned can become a WMD and create a new mutual destruction spin.  Even further down that road we are looking at warfare becoming a blend of “viable violence to force hybrid political will”.  What “unmanned” really is about is creating and weaponizing artificial-human capabilities.  We can see things like “synthetic mass”, “virtual manoeuvre” and of course the autonomy debate.
So, “how far?” Is quickly followed by “how fast?”  And based on this war…damned fast.  It took roughly 2 million years for the first shift in the nature of warfare.  Another 10k to get to the second.  And now it looks like we could be at a single century for the next one.  This is not to say that humans will be left out of warfare completely, but how we wage war shapes (and is shaped by) why and what.  I suspect we will see an evolution as you note, towards human effort focused on creating “unmanned superiority”, yet this will include more than explodey stuff.
At its fullest expression we get into things like predictive analytics that actually work.  This puts one at temporal advantage over an opponent.  We see AI commanders, maybe?  AI staff is already happening.  I strongly suspect there will be a race to see who can get the most unmanned, the fastest.  I honestly do not know where this ends, but one thing this war is teaching me is that this entire thing looks and feels real.  What we have seen in the last two years alone has been stunning.  The fact that the character of warfare is changing is really moving past a debate.  What we do not know is whether there will be a shift in war’s nature.  But I am getting a weird feeling about the whole damned business at this point.