Tenses

To go through these minefields reasonably easy I belive UA would require 3 things: - mine plow on whatever is there available - APS on everything, which is taking part in the push - these fancy new Strykers https://warriormaven.com/land/army-strykers-drones-laser-directed-energy-maneuver-short-range-air-defense From these 3 above only first one was easily obtainable and the third one is not even fielded in relevant numbers in US. With APS alone, artillery is a major problem but should be enough for these KA-52s, which are the main hurt dealers here.

I am also not a gambler but my wet dream is that Ukraine would punch through around Bakhmut, when it will be weak enough and go straight for Debaltseve. Psychological blow alone from that move would be tremendous but this single town is a focal point of supply routes for the entire eastern front. Taking any land on the territory of Donetsk/Luhansk pseudo-republic is also a major status quo changer. After that Crimea would be looking like a small deal compared to that. Winning in the east is much more valuable than south because it means that Crimea and all other territories comes free of charge. Single blow to cut a head of this ugly beast, worth dedicated history books. Yeah, what a nice dream...

This is the right way to go. We see increasing amount of small drones everyday and it is starting to become serious offensive weapon, not only reconessance. We have all seen that given time and resources, simple small drones can clear trenches almost by themselves, which is really showing the change in technology/implementation since this war has started more than a year ago. After some point and especially after true swarm will be born, this kind of weapons both remote controlled and computer assisted personal rifles are just behind lasers in drone defense. Is it cheap to use? Check. Is it easy to deploy in number? Check. Does it have about 2km effective range? Check(with proper ammo and targeting system). Before we will see true lasers deployed this needs to be the way to go. The ultimate goal will be something like that replaced by the laser gun and kinetic bullets left only for personal defense with all the ballistic/image recognition/weather stuff attached to allow rookie shoot down a drone from reasonable range. It might be expensive to deploy at the start but is really cheap to use which is ultimate goal in a war of attrition like the drone wars are. Who can kill things/people cheaper and keep the pace is the winner.

This. This is how Poland and Hungary goverments are selling bull**** to the less informed part of society. Evil EU is a reason for expensive energy from coal due to CO2 allowances. The same allowances goverment sells and can use this money as they wish, for example investing in decarbonizing industry. But this would be such a waste, wouldn't it? Honestly, after more than 2000 years and hundreds of smaller and larger wars, I think we are really at the point, where doing things together is an option. Wasting it would be the most shameful thing in European history. As everything, EU has major flaws but none of them justify throwing it into the ditch instead of fixing it.

Avdiivka is increasingly looking like Bakhmut in terms of situation and danger of encirclement. I know that it is a meat grinder for Russia but still the entire eastern front is looking grim right now. If these two cities will be encircled, new territory gains for Russia will take much less time and effort.

They already responded that their jet did not make contact with the drone. You could now push all the video evidence you have down their throats, they would just ignore it.

Imagine feeding them with their own medicine. "This bomb just fell off our jet. Really, happens all the time."

Double post

I think that sinking some fancy Kalibr-capable naval asset on the same international waters would be nice response. Only problem are people onboard... Without that there probably would be no problem with analog response.

After downing the US military aircraft shouldn't they be more afraid of US offensive?

As a Pole, I can also confirm this. Democracies around the World needs to change in order tu survive. And the problem is as old as any goverment - too much power. From absolutism, through monarchy up to democratic republic there are just some things, which should be not allowed even with having majority in place. Good constitution can probably take care of it but the problems described in it should be taken seriously. In regard to PL, I can only say that it is not any more uniform than other countries so current goverment doesn't have that much support as it might be looking like from abroad. And hopefully this will at least partially change in the nearest future.

When I first saw the crater this looked big. But on second thought, if this would be full 500kg or 400kg warhead, I don't think that we would see what standed there. Really curious what was that exactly.

With new, shiny and computer assisted rifles just being deployed in US on new 6.8mm calibre, this will be even easier. I wonder how effectively these toys can bring down single drone from lets say 2km distance. With whole squad shooting and proper software update this should be doable.

What is fun about this vision is that when you replace plasma rifle with Javelin, nothing really changes. Both are massive overkill and along with PGM, ultimate reason why this war looks like that. This is an age of sword, which massivly overcame the shield. Next era will be all about shield and how to effectively implement it(APS, lasers, UAVs and UGVs of all sizes, personal armor).

Platoon of Fallout-like power armor troops with plasma rifles VS platoon of T72B3? What is there not to like?

Just before the invasion I expected Ukraine to give Russians hell. But I expected it in the form of fierce and heroic defense against superior enemy and later extremely deadly partisan war. Especially the latter seemed like an absolute argument to prevent Russia from eventually attacking Ukraine, with forces that were clearly way too small for the country of this size. But there is one thing that was a total shock for me and in fact is for this day. I can't understand how useless is russian air force in this conflict, when you take the overall forces and AA assets into account. Apart from obvious things like bad training of mechanized forces, terrible logisticks and lack of manpower, this is the major factor in that we see, what we thought would be impossible 8 months after Putler made his first step to end himself and his country.

The equation is definitly important here. With more Russians it is natural that "efficiency" needs to be higher to keep the fighting sustainable for the Ukraine. What is important here, what Steve also mentioned, that we don't know what are the causes of Ukraine losses but all of them needs to be winded down per Russian killed/POWed. I hope that we will reach a moment, where RU heavy artillery presence is severly limited, which would make things a lot easier. For this to happen, steady amount of 155 and HIMARS ammo are necessary as counter-battery is crucial in that. With more mobiks there is also a serious problem with frontline lenght. Fights on the border and possible new push from Belarus are all in play and that degrades capacity on main vectors in Donbas and Lyhansk. For plus I hope that Kherson will be closed soon so that some of the units will be freed in order to strenghten other places. In terms of urban warfare with fully occupied large cities, I don't think that Ukraine will even try to take them by force. It is probably beyond their capacity and costs are too high. They will instead proceed with full siege, if operational theater will allow this and wait for the enemy to break

Finally. Without arty Russians are dead meat.

Anyone knows or suspects what is actually happenning in Kherson? I don't like this "evacuate quickly" b******t from Russians. They are always silent when they are hit hard, there must be something in the making. I fear the most some devil's work on Kahovka dam, which would be insane but this is what they are. The best scenario is that they don't want to lose potential mobilisation meat from the soon to be deocuppied western side of the river so they take it with them.

The problem with reflective coating is solved by a couple of different technologies. First of all military lasers does not operate in industrial frequency range and standard reflective coatings doesn't apply so much. There are even technologies like Free Electron Laser, which can continously change the freqency of light pumped out and auto-adapt to target and atmosphere response in order to "sink" into target and don't get absorbed by atomosphere at the same time. Fiber lasers, which are most popular right now thanks to their better atmosphere handling are probably not that scalable in terms of frequency but still should be enough for simple and cheap drone constructions. Military lasers are also built with pulse-action in mind and not steady output to negate any initial reflective material by overwhelming it to the point it melts or ablates and is no more reflective. This is probably the best approach as it is more adaptive. In order to address the problem we have to invest in new technology as older ones can be effective but not efficient. Look at Israel, their Iron Dome is very good and still, they are shifting to lasers because they loose too much money with each shot and are vulnerable to saturation attacks.

This is a crazy-good shot. Seems like taken by hand from behind a window in which case I bet it will win some photo competitions. Pilot does the job. Great symbol for Russia performance.

Looking forward I think that this war shows how laser usage en masse will be a total game changer in future conflicts. Heavy laser defence of urban and static military targets, medium laser C-RAM of mechanized, artillery and SAM units, light laser on some individual vehicles for self-defense(especially airbone). Massive laser usage adresses just so many problems, which adversaries struggle with right now, that it seems inevitable. It is really a shame that this is still not mature/declassified enough to hand it over to Ukraine.

A little bit stupid question but why are Shahed actually called drones? They function like just another cruise missile as far as I know, based on GPS and inertial guidance.

The mortar sound can be heard for a short period, but it is silent just before impact. It just gains speed during the fall.

Seems like more and more official statements suggest that NATO will personally kill everything russian in Ukraine, if nuke will be used. Hope they won't have to.