Kinophile

Sorry, but did we talk properly about this? First sinking of a significant at-sea naval asset by purely USS? Note that at 1.02 the boat is striking into the exact same spot as previous hits. No ship can resist that kind of stacked effects punching repeatedly into its hull volume. Add some MLRS onto the drones (done), and carry some UAS to strike the bridge during the fight. @The_Capt functionally there is already an Unmanned Service Arm - the UKR Navy. Russia destroying the UKR surface fleet was the best thing that could ever happen to it. It wiped the slate clean, disconnecting all the outdated thinking and personnel from future operations. Whomever is leading the Ukrainian Unmanned Navy is worth their weight in gold.

UKR is probably on the institutional verge (year+) of doing that. The establishment of an entire drone brigade (or Batt?) sets the base precedent. The establishment of UAS as a distinct separate and funded service is probably the only tool that will crack the defensive primacy nut... For a while. But that institutional Headstart could be strategically critical, not just at tac/op.

How long before drones are lobbing a spread of gps guided mortar shells into a given trench/target, RTB, auto reload and returns with a fresh salvo?

As Banks noted - Money Implies Poverty. Poverty Implies Violence.

I'm speaking quite granular, at the level of battalion or lower. I was highlighting the negative effects from the lack of experience and appropriate gear. Also, while the overall attack or battle was eventually won, the intital waves of a given battle early in the war often failed in their immediate tactical objectives, becoming trapped,, bogged, and decimated or simply stalled. Follow on waves usually broke through,, by simply grinding the defenders down. But as lesson's were learned and implemented the success rate of those early assault waves ratchetee up relentlessly

Ironically, the US tactical & operational solution to the Pacific assaults was mass - massed fires and massed infantry. The strategic solution seems like it was to out-tech the Japanese at a rapid rate of increment. The gigantic, expansive and (relatively) efficient R&D base allowed the US to develop and implement steadily better Op/Tac solutions at an exponentially increasing rate - but the Japanese R&D base was limited by materials, culture and politics. So going from near parity in tech to a large cumulative op/tech advantage became inevitable - with the ultimate strategic advantage detonating over Hiroshima. Japan by contrast lagged the US early and consistently, further exacerbating the difference in pace and depth of their respective R/D/I cycles. The death of the Japanese Navy (and its Naval Air Force) as an ocean going force was a direct result of this technological race. Innovate the fastest or die. WRT to Ukraine, it has a very innovative, lively and imaginative R&D culture, lead by a relatively democratic government, coupled with an extremely motivated workforce. With sufficient support they could probably outpace Russia in several important areas. They already heave, but the scale isn't there yet. Russia, to me, has a comparatively less actively innovative and more sluggish cycle, burdened with inefficient political process and heavy corruption but it does have enormous scaling potential and state direction can really push hard in certain areas giving heavy advantages (eg air, manpower). I suspect that until Ukraine can accelerate past Russia's RDI cycle it will never really win/be safe. It'll just achieve an unstable state, vulnerable to external shocks and imbalances. To some extant it appears to be in that framing already. The true power of the EU is always economic. If/when UKR can properly tap that power and expand on it will when it becomes truly secure. Work like Rheinmetall setting up plants in Ukraine is a good signifier but its the research area that really needs to be developed, modernised and expanded. UKR drone progression and their Amazing Adventures in AD show just how goddamn fast and hard they can work. To circle back to the Pacific - the early assault failures lead to rapid development and implementation of solutions (both technical & organizational) in time for the next island. Each assault iterated on the previous until by the end the US could contemplate invading Japan proper, a truly insane proposition. But they thought they could do it and I personally feel they would have eventually, bloodily, "won". Ukraine could potentially outstrip Russia in the RDI cycle, but its still pretty far off. When it does I think we'll see a gradual climb then a sudden and drastic shift to offensive primacy. TBH, that's when the truly scary **** is going to start happening...

I want to be clear, Im not putting you down in this next bit, I'm liking this discussion. That approach feels classic peacetime Western. The nub here for me is "avoidable". Say we need to take a building; Russia / ISIS / Brotherhood of Nod defending. They do not have the sense of avoidable casualties - for them it's whatever number of humans need to die to hold their objective. I suspect there's a point, rapidly, where if you have tech and organizational parity then major casualties are unavoidable no matter what route you take. It's just relatively less and what may on paper make sense as an outflanking move becomes a trap. There were numerous events in Fallujah II with a building used as bait for the marines, but then turned into a trap. Superior Air and ground assets usually turned the tide but that's what it took. In Mariupol it appears the primary unchanging UKR advantage was personal motivation - high levels, across almost all units, consistently and for a extremely long duration. Avoidable appears as a context specific choice, not just tactical but at a strategic and geopolitical level. ISIS was in an existential fight, so losses were unavoidable (they certainly compounded them with ridiculously bad wave assaults). US dodged the need in Iraq with over matched tech. But Ukraine is in an existential fight with a peer+ enemy. If a building needs to be taken, then and its always Now Now Now, then a top down approach takes time, space and people. In a crowded urban fight you never have enough of those. The related experiences so far bear that out with Drones making everything harder and easier in turn. Simple, blunt and quick is best. Simple doesn't not mean just frontal (unless you're a RUS/older UKR general, here everything is mono-directional: "Vorwarts!") EDIT: OODA'd by the Capt.

Oh and The Road, noted @Ultradave, man that film is bleak but good God the book is even more awful. Amazing work.

What's to stop UKR from plopping a flag down on top of the Kremlin? In the background during a live broadcast? Btw, @OBJis the MWI Urban Project is excellent, and I agree. But in there are examples of how badly lagging the doctrine you cite actually is. The three big urban fights of the last ten years have been Marawi, Mosul and Mariupol. None of those featured top down assaults by anyone (I believe. As always, open to refute) The initial police action that sparked Marawi was a ground level assault with very little aviation. The later AFP counter attack back into the city lost several helos early and remained a ground attack primarily. Mouse holing was absolutely a primary tactic (the PA units involved initially viewed it as innovative, and which says more about their lack of formal MOUT / FISH / FIBUA/ etc. Decades of CT jungle work will do that to an organization...) but highly effective snipers kept the roofs clear and forced the mouse holing. Mosul was, in the I believe, was a further development in that drones teally came into play, both ISR and attack. This seems to have deterred top assaults as the city roofscape was in view of ISIS for nearly the whole battle. Another factor was ISIS constantly rigging structures to drop on assaulters, even with defenders still inside and still fighting room to room. This made the Iraqis extremely leery of structure assaults (which was one intention, and I assume). So they used their Abrams and US air to drop the buildings in advance. Interestingly, Mariupol seems like it was a lateral development. The Russians had drones but were not experienced and the lag/disconnect from observe to fires was often apparent. The UKR had some drones but not many and once cut off their numbers plummeted. Even then RUS didn't do top down assaults. They just shelled the **** out of everything, as always. The UKR AFVs were apparently enormously useful and lethal, due to maneuverability, the RoF, optics and simple size. There's a highly detailed account by a Mariupol defender about retaking a tall-ish building; he isolated the site, poured fires in from adjacent structures and assaulted in from the ground. Standard, and simple and "safer". The top down attacks are dead but for civilian police /SOF CT work. Even then, could you imagine a modern Mumbai - but with intensive drone use by the Terrorists? Cripes, they could take an urban site, mine the surrounding roofs and alleyways with drone dropped APMs and decimate responding police.

Your solution is pretty much Russia's current MO.

Hopefully less instances now of those insane videos of T64s spending far too long shelling trenches at point blank range.

If fired into the tunnel.

They should fill it with explosives, katyushas and booby traps and send it against Sebastapol for the BSF to blow up, streaming it live on vkontackt.

Good riddance. If/when he gets sent to the hell that is Avdiivka I hope we get a nice FPV of his fascist little face just before the drone snots him. They can identify him later by finding his ratty beard in a tree. Fanatics like him were a critical enabler of the initial rebellion and directly responsible for the following decade of murder, rape, pillaging, invasion, torture, pointless stupid war oh and blowing up a Dutch civilian airplane. I wish nothing but the absolute worst for that human weasel.

His stupid expression as the video featured image is the not-so-subtle indicator of pure tripeness.

Circle-jerk, more like...

SO far. There's been two strikes on Iranian military events, one had the, Defense minister there, I think? Picture a repeat Jan 6 with FPV Drones and dropping tear gas on police lines. It's going to happen somewhere, inevitably.

Slowly slowly, too goddamn slowly, but progressing.

Why not, Putin basically does about Ukraine, the pr*ck.

European train stations are almost universally dodgy AF. I remember the Florence and Koln ones as particularly iffy.

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/france-will-produce-dozens-of-caesar-acs-for-ukraine/

FramkenSAM

The better part of hitting them taking off is that they're fully loaded and fueled, they're far from ER teams; also they are close to the ground so no room to maneuver and pilot surprise /distraction can easily snot them into the tarmac even if you don't hit.