G.I. Joe

“Why didn’t they just fly the Giant Eagles all the way to Mordor?”
”ISR Billy, ISR”.

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.
 

He really gets it. 
 

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.

Caesar felt the same way about his German bodyguard/calvary. The more things change....

The more forward looking U.S. military stuff is starting to refer to the FLOS, and the FLOR. The forward line of sensors, and the forward line of robots. This would seem to be case study.

MiG-29 with AASM Hammer guided bomb

Very good point.  I have said before and will re-state here and now, a free fall Russian collapse will make the current war a fond memory compared to what would likely happen next.  Our best case scenario is a slow and steady decline of an isolated Russia until they are pretty much a client state of China, who will of course recognize “being shackled to a corpse” and all that entails.
I think a full Russian failure is in the cards without a major regime change in a direction that simply remains extremely remote - I.e. full Russian pivot back towards democracy and a European facing political ruling class.  The question is really “how fast?”
 

I used to hate war games where there were “rules” on what we could or couldn’t do. History is full of events wher an opponent didn’t “play by the rules” and the other got smeared because they didn’t think the “inferior” opponent was smart enough to be innovative enough to beat the crap out of them.
i’ve never understood the concept unless it was structured specifically to determine is something was or was not possible, and then to determine the best possible defense against it. One doesn’t do that by designing a training operation and putting rules in place to ensure one gets the results one wants. If one is trying to train some one to “think on their feet,” one doesn’t do that by saying “Oh, but you can’t do this or that. This is one of the reasons one should play CM missions with as many different opponents as possible. No one thinks or sees the the same way. IF EVERYONE’S THINKING THE SAME THING, SOMEONE’S NOT THINKING!
 

Although they then have to admit/prove that it's Ukrainian and not a "smoking accident".
Surely nets will simply drive the USV's to have a terminal underwater phase ?
The classic is the Japanese Midway wargames where the Opposing force hid their carriers nearby ( IIRC it was even almost exactly where irl the American carriers were positioned ) and thrashed the attacking force.
That was deemed impossible, the opfor guys were chastised and it was replayed for the Japanese "win".
And then in reality ... 🤪

Pilot might have already retarded the throttles and power control levers for landing, or pilot or copilot might have panicked and thrown the fuel-cutoffs to all engines.

Probably por, shoddy, or lack of maintenance. Virtually all large turbine engines on commercial and military engines are secured with three large bolts, a thrust bolt just aft of the intake (the largest) and two sway bolts on either side of the exhaust module to prevent it from swaying fron side to side. Amazing eh!

It would take years to make these carcasses fly, let alone function. 
 

Quite a few are missing engines and it’s a sure bet they’ve all been stripped of electronics. 
... and I suspect some radar technician's wives have some pretty powerful microwave ovens.

UKR drones, attacked Ryazan' oil refinery were UKR developed "Lyutyi" ("Fury") drones (the second from above in right column). They very similar to Chineese Mugin-5, also used by Ukriane in strikes. By rumors this drone can fly on 1000 km and carry up to 75 kg of warhead. But real data unknown. 
Reportedly during the strike on Ryazan refinery were taken out two from four fractioning columns AVT-4 and AT-6, different by year outpit. Because of this Ryazan refinery lost 70 % of own output capabilities. Most of production of this refinery have been sending to Moscow oblast. Intersting that today was claimed about death of top-manager of "Lukoil" company Vitaliy Robertus - the fourth, since the war began. There are rumors he was kileld diring drone strike, but no confirmation yet 

The thing to understand right now is that the Speaker already has no authority. His sole leverage is that nobody wants to go through another debac-tacular leadership election again. And with Buck's retirement and NY23 coming up, the Republican margin will be down to 1 vote for a while. It will then go back up to...2. So, there is little Johnson can do to punish recalcitrant members and plenty they can do to ruin his day, every day.  
The inescapable fact the derives from the above is that there is no plan or agreement. Johnson is a cipher...and Trump's cipher at that...in the House. He has no party loyalty to rely on (as Jefferies does) and his team is made up of pols who have more experience, cliques that support them, etc (i.e. Scalise, Jordan). What plan there is, is simply to stymie aid as long as possible because that's what Trump wants. Thus, the discharge petition.
To the vote, that the discharge petition is even happening tells you it has legs and in this case there are actually two (one from a Democrat and one from a Republican) but it is a hard road to travel and it takes time. How would the vote go? You probably lose about 10 to 15 Democrats but you also probably gain 70 to 100 Republicans. If the vote were a secret ballot, you probably would get 150 plus. Ukraine aid is that rare thing...it is truly popular and bipartisan. If they get the discharge to the finish line, it almost certainly passes...Johnson be damned. 

Agreed. Losing power from one engine on a four engine aircraft generally shouldn't be too serious an emergency. Even the weight shift and asymmetric drag from having it fall off would probably not be too hugely significant (the engine would likely be close to the C of G in that position), but the fire and whatever else may have caused it to fall off hints at other systems and structural damage...

If the fire had caused enough damage that the engine fell off, then their might well be significant damage and weakening in the wing above as well (and e.g. in the electrics and mechanisms for the flaps for landing). 

I've been thinking about this post most of the day, and keep coming back to "Neat. Now what?"
Which got me thinking about how other step changes in military capability were handled. The two obvious ones that come to mind are tanks in WWII, and airpower during the Cold War. Now, clearly, in both cases they existed early, but they only really became effective/worrisome/"game-changing" some decades after their entree to the battlefield.
For the infantry, in both cases, the response became basically the same: very small infantry units became fully capable of anti-ing the other thing, either anti-tank or anti-air.
During WWII anti-tank rifles, bazookas, fausts, shrecks, Piats and hearty grenades gave platoons and sections an ability to defend against or attack against tanks, pretty explicitly at the detriment to the nominal role of the infantry, which was to oppose and defeat enemy infantry. That trend was significantly enhanced during second half of last century with things like RPGs and M-72s. This is at the point now where with weapons like Javelin tanks perhaps have more to fear from infantry than the vice versa, even though lugging Javelin around is a royal PITA especially for light infantry.
The introduction of air power, and especially effective CAS, started us on the road to the fully illuminated battlefield, where nowhere is safe and to be seen is to die. During WWII the only real counter that the infantry had was to dig on, or hide, or both. But during the Cold War a lot of effort went into MANPADS, resulting in the Stinger in the 1980s and with other systems following soon after. Just like their anti tank weapons, lugging around anti-aircraft missiles is a PITA which detracts from the nominal role of engaging enemy infantry, not to mention the drain on budgets and training schedules. But on the other hand now every platoon and section is capable of destroying any tank or aircraft that wanders into it's little tactical AO. And once the air and armour battle is won - either locally or globally - then the rest is just mopping up. The degradation of the infantry platoon and section's ability in the infantry-battle doesn't really matter, since while that bit remains hard and unpleasant, it is incredibly harder and more unpleasant in the absence of either air or armoured support.
So you can probably see where this is going.
Assuming UAS remains in play (and why wouldn't it?), then the role of infantry platoons and sections will change again. Instead of being little nodes of anti-tank and anti-air goodness,with some residual anti-infantry capability, they will become little anti-UAS nodes, with the weapons, training, mindset and purpose to defeat enemy UAS in their local area, and also protect or project friendly UAS capability around themselves. If an enemy tank or aircraft turns up then the section or platoon mightn't be able to deal with it themselves, but they will be networked to someone who can - guns, missiles, friendly armour or air, or friendly UAS. And they'll still, you know, carry rifles. Mainly out of habit and tradition, as well as giving the NCOs something to inspect every day. But most of their weaponry, and sensors, and just the general claggage they're carting about will be geared towards winning the UAS fight, because winning that will mean that the rest is just mopping up.
In other words, the infantry will be able to concentrate physically and cognitively on the UAS battle because it won't be their role any more to win the tank, infantry, or local airspace battle.

Well said. We're not going to beat fast, light and cheap with slow, heavy and expensive. Examples abound in history - battleships v airplanes being the closest example. 

Or UKRAINIAN floating objects!

Lol
 

Claims to show moment of impact against the "Sergei Kotov" patrol vessel.