Hapless

Those side-by-side thermal and non-augmented shots really show off how important thermals are

Let's see how this pans out:
If true, then we're looking at a successful infantry-focused river crossing to compare-contrast with the failed heavy metal Russian attempts at Bilohorivka.

Let's see how this pans out:
If true, then we're looking at a successful infantry-focused river crossing to compare-contrast with the failed heavy metal Russian attempts at Bilohorivka.

Let's see how this pans out:
If true, then we're looking at a successful infantry-focused river crossing to compare-contrast with the failed heavy metal Russian attempts at Bilohorivka.

UKR artillery or HIMARS has struck Russian supply convoy in Hladkivka village, 25 km south from Kherson, this is Hola Prystan' direction - relatively calm area, distant from Krynky. Russians got too much relax and...
Claimed losses 8 trucks destroyed and damaged, up to 25 killed and up to 30 wounded.
Judging on angry posts among Russian milbloggers, these losses can be close to the true.
 
 

As usual, I'm suddenly finding I accomplished something entirely by accident and feel a culturally ingrained need to apologise...

But hey-ho, back to work.

Just wait until these are automatic homing and deployable via artillery
 
 

Just wait until these are automatic homing and deployable via artillery
 
 

If no one can attack the result is... peace?

I mean, caveats ahoy and not necessarily a warm, fun peace that everyone enjoys... maybe more like the 90s where it's 'peace' if you live in the right places and people living everywhere else double down on that asymmetry thing.

Or a grinding war of Exhaustion.  Guy named Bowdish did a long history view and came up with 5 basic military strategies:
- Extermination (not used as much these days but does happen), complete removal of an opponent bottom to top.  Mongols were really good at this one.
- Exhaustion.  Essentially fighting until one side can no longer hold it together on a societal scale. Think end of WW1.
- Annihilation.   The destruction of an opponents ability to fight.  Two sub methods here: Attrition and Dislocation.  Attrition is basically wearing down until military failure happens.  Corrosion is a modern spin on this theme, think of it as rapid precise Attrition.  Dislocation is Manoeuvre Warfare, out tempo, out move and fracture while imposing your own order.
- Intimidation.  The land of Deterrence and Coercion.  However there are examples of Compellance in this space as well.
- Subversion.  We have talked a lot about this one and all that Grey Zone stuff.
So both sides in this war have tried Annihilation and they may have taken it as far as it can go.  Manoeuvre is a distant memory.  Attrition is happening but we may have even run out of options room here.  So we are likely down to Exhaustion.  Keep in mind this is deeper than military Attrition, the calculus is different.  It is essentially draining things like human capita, industrial capacity and economics.  One bleeds an opponent out an a national scale, slowly.  Will becomes very important in Exhaustion and this is why Russia will likely try and keep the conflict in this arena - Putin figures that Russia can take more, longer than the West is willing to give.  He is basically playing chicken with his own society.  Of all the crap he has done, this is probably the most irresponsible: he is betting that a nuclear power won’t totally collapse before the West pulls back.  That is bigger than his or Russian insular BS as we are talking Sum of All Fears stuff.
But here we are.  The good news is that the support bill for the UA will likely go down drastically as defensive warfare will be prioritized.  And as Russia has demonstrated one can basically hold that together with landmines and bailing twine [aside: I wonder what Ukraine and the Wests landmine stocks look like?].
Or maybe peace breaks out.  A dirty unsettled peace that will never heal over.  We will very likely do this again in 10 years or so unless we can cauterize.

As usual, I'm suddenly finding I accomplished something entirely by accident and feel a culturally ingrained need to apologise...

But hey-ho, back to work.

Those side-by-side thermal and non-augmented shots really show off how important thermals are

As usual, I'm suddenly finding I accomplished something entirely by accident and feel a culturally ingrained need to apologise...

But hey-ho, back to work.

As usual, I'm suddenly finding I accomplished something entirely by accident and feel a culturally ingrained need to apologise...

But hey-ho, back to work.

As usual, I'm suddenly finding I accomplished something entirely by accident and feel a culturally ingrained need to apologise...

But hey-ho, back to work.

Damn you Hapless.  He got first post on page 3000.

If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.

Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.

Armour would be nice, but I think the potential for assisted movement is more important.

Giving a platoon of infantrymen the ability to run several km at speed without fatigue... that's a gamechanger at the pointy end.

If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.

Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.

If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.

Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.

Its not viable to up armour to upper surfaces of a tank. Modern tanks are already extremely heavy on the top armour by historical measures with around 40mm or so and it makes them crazy heavy as it is. You'd need about 50% more than that to even stop shell fragments from a close burst from a 155, let alone an EFP or a shaped charge. It's long been the case that its only viable to stop HEAT from the frontal arc and even then that has been since the advent of composite armour. When you think about the surface area you are talking about compared to actually quite small armoured front section of a tank you can imagine how having in any way comparable armour on the roof would simply not be possible. Pretty much at any scale.

Armour would be nice, but I think the potential for assisted movement is more important.

Giving a platoon of infantrymen the ability to run several km at speed without fatigue... that's a gamechanger at the pointy end.

Gotta be honest. Kind of where my head goes.  Big problem with energy density here.  A battle suit that basically makes the individual soldier the platform would solve a lot of this.  Combined with nano-tech it would mean that an individual soldier could carry more combat power further and faster while providing protection.  It add the ability to distribute that mass very widely. 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton
But how do you power the damn thing?  An exo-suit with armor will have a lot of weight and the only thing with enough energy to power one is fossil fuels, which is really problematic for many reasons.  So we would need something that can meet or exceed existing fuel energy density to power these things.
This, or one starts looking at human augmentation and/or genetic engineering but if one thinks unmanned is a tempest, just try and dive into that snakepile. 

If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.

Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.

If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.

Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.