Kinophile

How it looks from inside, when FPV flies into blindage entrance, covered by carpet %). Probably Russian footage.
 

Operation in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts still under a fog of war. 
Today we had only free-Russian fighters "presentation" of 25 captured enemies, among them was platoon commander of 45th engineer-sapper brigade of Western military district, which unit set minefield, was attacked and destroyed. 
Free-Russia fighters wrote, Russian aviation is dropping many KABs/FABs on own villages and settlements, and its number is more that was in Bakhmut.  
Russian milbliggers became more pessimistic (therea are no more reports about completely repelled attack) - they report  about fierce clashes, especially in Kozinka and Spodariushyno. Graivoron is under artillery shelling. Belgorod is under periodical MLRS strikes and... under fallings of Pantsyr S1 launch stages. For today more than a dozen buildings got damages, were destroyed and damaged more than two dozens of cars
  

Even slow boats have fast screws - little propellors don't move much water per turn, so they need more turns, and you have to stay ahead of the currents and wind.  If they want slow drive noise they'd have to go with big paddlewheels, or robotic rowboats that have big flat surfaces that move a lot of water per stroke or per paddle board in the water and probably have a big reflective radar signature.  You can do steam or compressed gas powered for the final couple miles, but those will also have an acoustic signature.

Interesting post by Rybar on the current situation near Avdiivka. Some excerpts below:
https://t.me/rybar/58209
 
 

I have a serious problem with this narrative that somehow Russia “did Adiivka” and has now fully recovered.  This entire position is based on some pretty sketchy vehicle production stats, most of the info coming out of Russia itself.  As far as we can tell the RA wrecked an entire MRD at Adiivka.  This is on top of loses elsewhere.  The idea that Russia simply stamped out an entire shiny new MRD to replace it is disinformation as far as I am concerned.  Russian force quality has been on a one way trajectory from the start of this war, except for a few notable areas: UAS and ISR - and we still are not sure if these are anomalies or trends.  In other capability areas it is exactly as you describe, more older equipment. (equipment less suitable for this environment) This is due to RA losses exceeding Russian industrial capacity to generate modern equipment.  It has been noted by more than one expert that Russia is draining its Soviet legacy force pool of equipment and ammunition.
So the idea that Russia is simply shrugging off all these losses - losses that Ukraine is barely able to sustain, while quaking under the giant footsteps of an unstoppable Russia, all the while the weak and puny west sits back and watches…well this borders on propaganda not worthy of this forum.  These sorts of gross oversimplifications without any real evidence, or skewing evidence need to stop as they play directly in Russian information operations.
I suspect the Ukrainian posters who have pitched these angles are a combination of war weary and/or are thinking that by continuing to promote a desperate Ukrainian situation that we will somehow become politically motivated.  However, they are missing the very real risk that some who read this forum may take this entire narrative as a sign that Ukraine is a lost cause, and we are all out of patience with lost causes.  By continually shouting “Ukraine is dooooomed” they might just convince enough people that they are right.  The answer won’t be to “double down and support Ukraine” it may wind up being “cut out losses and move on”.   That is what makes this angle such a powerful pro-Russian tool.  Russia must make this war appear “too hard, too complicated” because we in The West hate those situations.  Any and all skewed or heavily biased assessments like these simply play into Russian hands.

Thank you for taking the time to answer. 
I feel I need to solidify my thoughts a bit more before discussing further, as several of the positions you ascribe to what I'm thinking are actually not my positions.
This is a failure of clarity on my side but there's also a easiness to lumping people into boxes of thought - but it's made easier by foggy articulation. 
I shall ponder... 
 
 
 

Not entirely fair to other countries, but still... 
 

Not entirely fair to other countries, but still... 
 

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.

We'll see. 

We'll see. 

Outstanding summary…much better than mine.  I would add that “Air Superiority” is also about “range, reach and persistence”.  We relied on air power dominance for deep battle, which is critical to the western way of warfare.  If that is denied we run into serious trouble.  The Soviet system relies of air power more for, as you note, denial and strategic shaping.  The Soviets really did not have a CAS or operational air power complex like we developed in the west.  Even Tac Avn was seen as a firepower projection element and not an integral part of manoeuvre.
Beyond Air, the west relies heavily on multi-domain superiority.  We not only need to own the air, but also the maritime, space and cyber for our system to really work.  The major problem is, and will continue to be that potential adversaries are not stupid.  They know that if they cannot dominate a domain, they only need to deny it in order to create cracks in the western military system.  They have, and will continue to invest heavily into these denial capabilities.  The problem is that denial has become increasingly easy to achieve.  This has been due to several driving factors but miniaturization of processing power has been central.  By being able to load more complex processing power, and sensors to inform that processing…all cheaper and lighter.  It means weapons for denial have become not only smaller - allowing for greater range - but more autonomous and precise.
This is potentially enormous.  It redraws the fabric of warfare at some pretty fundamental levels.  In the past it was some very small things.  The ability to create overwhelming firepower in the form of things like machine guns and fast fire artillery had a massive impact on warfare.  But in reality the largest impacts on warfare were a rail line, signals wire and tin can.  Rail lines allowed for massive quick force projection on scales and timelines we never saw before.  Signals wire linked all that firepower volume together.  And tin cans meant we could keep troops in the field for 365 days a year.  Those three relatively disconnected technologies changed warfare forever.
What we are seeing on the modern battlefield is even more profound.  We are talking about artificial thinking and decision making.  We are seeing everything in real time and feeding it back to these systems.  To try and pin this on a Western or Soviet military school of thought is really not useful in my opinion as what we could potentially be seeing is so much larger.