The Steppenwulf

On a clear night you don't need GPS over water - you can use stars.  It's a little trickier to do with the amount of extra optics you might want to put on a drone (vs a ship, a plane, or a cruise missile), but detectors with lots of pixels are cheap, and if you're a quadcopter you can pause periodically to stare at the stars and orient yourself.  
Terrain relative nav has to be much easier now than the early days of cruise missiles - both space imaging of the earth's surface and the quality of image sensors for mobile devices have gotten orders of magnitude better.  Along with *way* faster computers for doing the matching.  The recent Mars landers do terrain relative nav from a couple miles up *on another planet* and they're using a computer that's equivalent performance to a 1998 low-end mac laptop. A couple models down from the one I started playing the CM:BO demo on.  More modern cell phone processors with dedicated image processing can do *way* better at still very low power.

We actually have no idea what Putin’s real base of genuine support is or is not.  First off he controls any and all “polls” either directly or indirectly so trying to gauge who really supports him, who is pretending simply to avoid trouble and who opposes but is afraid to say anything, in real terms is basically impossible to do inside Russia, let alone outside looking in.  “Look a bunch of people lined up to support him” is not a viable basis for deductions.
Second problem is that support, in a functioning democracy, is founded on a basis of “informed decision”.  This means that all sides can spin, argue and slant but in the end the news media and objective journalism is supposed to provide a voter with a range of diverging viewpoints and facts.  Voters can then decide who to support, or not support based on their own personal perception and understanding.  This is damned hard to do in a functioning liberal democracy; however, in Russia it is likely impossible.  Putin controls the mainstream media - we have heard endless stories of dissenters being arrested or charged, hell he passed laws making criticism of this war illegal.  He also has a lot of control within social media, suppressing sites and flooding the RUSNet with stooges.  We have seen enough outright lies and insane claims out of Russian media in the last two years to know that the average Russian simply is not able to access much beyond what Putin wants them to see and hear.  Under these conditions “real support” is nearly impossible because no alternative facts, ideas or even options are ever presented.
Finally, as our Ukrainian friends like to point out continually, the average Russian is poorly educated, poor wealth and largely ignorant…this is why they keep signing up for this war.  To now accuse these people of “knowingly supporting Putin” as if they have access to alternatives is short-sighted at best.  Further, Kraze’s continued insistence to call every living Russian on the planet as vicious war loving murders is not only disingenuous, it treads dangerously close to genocidal narratives that have no place on what is supposed to be a rational objective forum.  We know Russians opposed this war, a few hundred thousand ran away.  Others are resisting passively.  We also know that many really do not even understand what this war is or is not because Putin is preventing them from seeing any truth but his own.  We also know some Russians also buy into this war and Putin fully even knowing the reality.  In the end we are going to have to deal with all of them in some form or another because as much as some people are acting out emotionally here, we are not going to wipe Russia off the face of the earth and salt the ground on their mass graves.
So be pissed off, but do not come here and promote outright disinformation in some sort of weird attempt to get us to all buy into some “every Russian is evil and must die” nonsense.  There are all sorts of sites on the internet where people on both sides can engage in that emotional orgy, but it should not be here.  The second this forum becomes one of those places, I for one, am out.
 

Does Putin have a base of support?
Sure.
So did Saddam and any number of other dictators but it's precisely wrong to imagine the show they just put on reflects what it is. A pre-secured 85% vote isn't a reflection of strength, it's an obvious attempt to tighten the lid on a pressure cooker. I mean seriously folks...if Putin had a large majority of natural voters who would vote for him do you really think he'd pass on the legitimacy that sort of result represents? Of course not. 
I know it's tempting to point and say "See...Russians are intrinsically bad and that's what this vote shows us" but if you do, be aware you are indulging in the kind of thinking that you hate when you see it on the other side. 

Considering that he basically: controls the media, makes real opposition disappear (or kills them outright), has central control of internal security who are arresting anyone who even has a whiff of real dissent, and anyone running against him is basically approved by him - Russia isn't even close to a functioning democracy at this point anymore than North Korea is.  To come here claiming otherwise is disinformation of the worst sort.

BS of the highest order.  You have zero proof of this and just about no one who knows anything about election processes outside of Russia agrees with you.

Latest Perun video and nothing we don't know, Russian Arms Exports are in the toilet being flushed down the swanny...
Quite a good analysis and some detail about the deals with India and China.
 
 

BBC had a page on Macron and his volt face...
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68575251
 

This really helped me understand the Russian pyramid problem. 
Also touched on why Ukraine is protecting its younger generation from recruitment. 
Imo worth the 30 minutes watching as he explains the issues really well.
Ties into Russian increase of invalids...

And see it that way: some of that EU money might be added to that. It's a pure bonus.
The most importnt part is of course that this represents a legal precedent.
The EU has been producing legal precedents with mind-boggling speed since Feb 2022, actually, compared to how sluggish the EU is designed to be (to facilitate common ground between diverse member nations).
This sleepy giant started to run, and he has deep coffers.

That's 500 mil just for ammo production, out of a total of 2 bil for defense spending.
But more important than the actual numbers is the fact, that the EU as an entity is spending money on defense. AFAIK, that is unprecedented.

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.

It's the EU elections in June. Macron isn't a candidate but his party has candidates and they are trailing in the polls.

Macron can't be re-lected. He is in his second term and in France there is a two-term limit. And the presidental elections are three years away....so this makes the rest of this analysis questionable.

That's what I interpreted him as saying. Asking when Russia will run out is like asking when the world will run out of oil. The answer is never, it just becomes more scarce. In fact the IISS estimate I posted above does not actually predict a run dry date, but rather how long Russia will be "able to sustain its assault on Ukraine at current attrition rates".

I think he means that technically speaking, Russia will probably never exactly run out of war material, because before that happens it will reduce consumption/exposition to risk when faced with a shortage. Therefore one can not just draw a graph with one line representing average production, the other average consumption and at the point where they meet, the Russian army will stop firing guns or have no more tanks. He says this in all his podcasts in particular whenever ammo production is discussed, so I am fairly confident this is what is meant here as well.
And whereas the Russians can decide to reduce the firing rate/usage rate pretty much at will, they cannot increase the production rate by will alone, therefore the replacement rate is the more objectively observable variable.
 

If it's CMx3 I would think it has to go 64 bit opening up more RAM? I'm not a coder but wouldn't this mean larger maps/scenarios without worrying about slow downs or graphics issues? 

"Over £100 million of the package will reportedly be spent to procure "maritime capabilities"."
Really hope the RN and SBS are all over the Slow Death of the BSF. 
 

How much is NATO providing in terms of targeting and other support for these USVs? NATO AWACS have been a constant feature in the Black Sea, and while certainly we won't know the extent of their cooperation with UKR forces until post-war, i feel like ignoring their contribution of ISR undermines the nature and deployment of these drones, sure, they are "cheap" but backed by NATO satellites, NATO aircraft in the sky watching the Black Sea and none of that is cheap. 

Sure, right. Not nuts. 
 

There seem to be two critical items US provides that Europe can't - C4ISR and Patriots. For almost everything else there is a European equivalent or better (Brad /CV90s, HARM /Meteor, NASSAMs, etc).
I'm not saying CV90s is better than Brad's, but they are certainly equivalent; if UKR swapped every single Brad for a CV90 would there be a drop in effectiveness? Dump the token Abrams and Leos for a fleet of Korean K2s and you're still rolling. 
EU arms production rates and quality of machines can absolutely match US. 
The best (and worst) thing about EU support is that it's non-binary. If the wrong dipsh*t wins the US election then aid drops like a drunk Ivan. EU is slower to get to a point but also slower to leave, and even then intra-member agreements are par for the course. 
Edit-There is a third US item : world wide logistics...damn. 

Ok, help me out here because following the bouncing ball is becoming really difficult.  Obviously, I am no stable genius, you are completely losing me.  So to review:
- You came back to this forum and opened with "Hey fellas, anyone think Ukraine is out of military gas and we should think about peace negotiations?"
- Then we began a discussion on a possible operation down south at Kherson.  You vehemently disagreed, ignored evidence and pretty much dismissed any and all Ukrainian military options at this point in the war.  Steve even called you out for this.
- Ok, I got tired of trying to explain why the southern operation is viable - you clearly were not in a listening mood on that one.  Then I called you out and challenged to to provide your "solution.
- Your solution was for the US to double-down on support and "threaten" Russia to a negotiation table.  Some vague hand-waving but we could have a UN Zone of separation, Ukraine in the EU (but not NATO), some sort of vague Ukraine defence and security guarantees, Ukraine gives up Crimea and Donbas, and reparations and war crimes are pretty much a long shot.  Did I miss anything? 
- Of course to do this, the US would need to commit an overwhelming amount of support to this war.  Likely an order of magnitude more in order to "scare Russia to the table quickly".  Side-stepping the obvious problems of US political will, process and internal frictions -  Russia is not stupid and knows these issues as well - the ability for Ukraine to upscale and operationalize all that support could likely take years, but ok...for arguments sake let's just assume all that away.
- As a self-proclaimed UK citizen, you are essentially making the end-state of this war entirely a US problem, which is frankly disingenuous; however, let's just put all that to the side too.  If Ukraine receives a whole mountain load of military support...why negotiate?  Increased military support would create new military options for the UA to renegotiate the current Russian position by f#cking killing them.  If the only way to solve this is with overwhelming US support, why on earth wouldn't Ukraine use that support to push the RA out of their own country?  "Hey Ukraine, here is enough capability for you to re-establish air superiority.  What?  Oh no, you aren't supposed to really do it.  No, you can use that to give Crimea away, lock in exclusion from NATO and agree to a shaky ceasefire."   Seriously...W.T.F?!
- So after that little journey we are right back where we freakin started...Ukrainian military options in prosecuting this war until Russia can't do anything about it. Which you started off dismissing in the first place!
So rather than come on here and advocate for more Ukrainian support (particularly out of the US) from the beginning, you took us on this personal exploration of Ukraine being out of options unless we support them better.  We had to walk through what peace looked like in your mind...which frankly looks a lot like going back on the offensive once the UA is bombed up.
I swear to gawd if you are not kevinkin back on another account I will be shocked.  If you are honestly a Labour Party carrying member of the UK, you are locked in the mother of all Dunning-Kruger effects.
Regardless...got it.  Thank you so much for highlighting that we need to support Ukraine more, and any negotiations must be from a position of strength.  Let's just move on...

I wish it was that simple. There are those who fall into one or both of these categories. For me, the greater cause for concern are those who actually mean well and are, let's say, mainstream level informed or slightly above, i.e. they watch the news and read an article about the war here and there. But without investing as much time as we do into understanding the details.
If you only watch mainstream media - and I'm talking about the ones that are actually fairly high quality in e.g. Germany you get the impression that Ukraine fought hard and bravely but Russia is advancing.
And these people are increasingly voicing opinions like "we should encourage Ukraine to start negotiating for peace".

I'm waiting for the German leadership to get off its perch. Putin has the watch, Europe has the time. Pressures are on the Russians, Europe sees the invasion as a threat to European security. We'll see more of more EU involvement, arms etc. In the US, the arms manufacturers are screaming at the Republicans to vote funds. This war will run. And there is no way peace can be done with Putin.