Butschi

We are often lamenting the pendulum swinging this way these days. On the other hand, not long ago a woman had to be given permission by her husband to take a job, had to have sex with him whenever he felt like it and could be beaten by him - legally. (In Germany, don't know about other countries) If you were anything but strictly heterosexual you faced going to jail or get electro shock therapy. So not being allowed to use certain words is annoying, true, but on a different level, I think. But we are straying off topic, I guess.

Well, that's - sadly - true. However, Ukraine doesn't merely strive to be an ally but to actually become part of the West, the EU in particular. And since joining EU means submitting to EU jurisdiction, Ukrainian society will have to adapt at least some.

You do realize that this is basically the same propaganda that Putin uses? I don't believe anymore in "innocent people". Neither in Russia, nor in Gaza, nor in Iran. Sorry. And that is the seed of how war crimes happen.

As @chrisl noted, the terms autonomous and automated are getting increasingly murky these days and pretty much depend on context. Your definition of autonomous, "no communication with a human" would also fit a system where e.g. a room has lots of cameras hanging from walls and ceiling, connected to a computer. The computer controls a bunch of miniature or real cars which themselves are totally stupid. Both are existing scenarios, so the definition is not wrong. But probably not what we would mean or want in the context of drone warfare because you still have the line of communication with the controller who just happens to not be a human. Then there is edge computing where you have sensors in the vehicle and do some lightweight (pre-) computing there but rely on a central server for everything else. Probably also not what we want. In addition you can have fully independent systems that gain additional capabilities by communicating with each other or (centralized) infrastructure. Think autonomous vehicles that can do cooperative maneuvers that would otherwise require LOS, for instance. In autonomous driving we would usually want fully independent systems but that is more for safety considerations. A real drone swarm is a totally different concept, I think. Of course it could fit the "classic" definition "independent but with (sort range) communication among all the swarm members". But one could also imagine a single system, as you suggest, that consists of many parts and distributes computing etc. between the different members. That would have really interesting features as it could become more "intelligent" the more members (and thus computing power) it has and so dynamically do more or less complicated stuff.

All very true. Frankly, though, I never got the "joke" in Ukrainians or any other Eastern Europeans using Nazi symbolism. Of course I understand them actually being Nazis even less. Because if they were consistent they would have to construct some concentration camps where they would work themselves to death. That's what the real Nazis would have done to them. Edit: I mean, it's like Afro Americans running around with a Confederate Flag, I guess. Is that a thing?

Quite possible. The question remains why Kyiv or Odessa instead of logistics nodes, or high value targets at/near the frontlines - like the Ukrainians do. Could be that their (cruise-) missiles are just not accurate enough but do a good job of binding Patriots etc. to civilian centers and thus enabling the RuAF.

Whether this is their intention or not, they do it like in WW2: One thing that the bombing campaigns were effective at was keeping the Luftwaffe busy defending the cities instead of contesting the frontlines. Ukraine has to commit Patriots et al. defending the cities instead of shooting down Russian aviation near the front.

Huh? March 7th + 48h is off by about two weeks. That could have been anything or nothing and not related to this incident at all, I think?

Anything that makes the target look less like the training images. I guess we are going to see camouflage that is taylored to fool AI not humans. Adversarial attacks were all the rage a few years back, e.g. images modified in way that they look more or less identical to humans but entirely different to AI.

Assuming something smart at work here is probably over-interpreting the videos. The simple explanation for the first video is that the system got distracted by some dirt pattern (doesn't look like it's targeting the guy running) and in the second case the fire made the vehicle look different than the images the system was trained on. Not saying the system can't be that smart, just that we humans tend to interpret more into those things than there is in reality. More often than not it's a bug, not a feature.

And nobody says they are. The Tiger might get to roll a 100 sided die while the T64 gets a 4 sided one. And still the Tiger can roll a success (rolling that 1) while the T64 doesn't. It is unlikely but that is statistics and you can't argue statistics with a sample size of 1. And there may be 99 incidents where the T64 makes the spot first and 1 where it doesn't. People rarely post "Yep, look, happened just as I think it should." On the other hand, the one where the Tiger got lucky is almost guaranteed to trigger that "Spotting in CM is broken!!!" post.

You should, though. Spotting in CM is a statistical process, meaning you throw dice every n seconds. Let's say I have a collection of 6, 8 and 10 sided dice. I only tell you I use one die for the T64 and one for the a Tiger but not which tank gets which. I'll also tell you that you need to roll a 1 in order to make a spot. I make a few dice rolls and tell you that the Tiger made the spot after 5 rolls, the T64 after 8 rolls. Now, tell me which die I used for which tank. (Or maybe I lied and only had 6 sided dice... How can you possibly know?)

I think the answer should be a big "No!". It would play right into Putin's hand because then he could just accuse the West of applying double standards. Something along the lines of evil NATO opposing Russia for bringing their brethren in Donbas and on Crimea home into mother Russia's arms after they actually voted to be part of Russia - when they themselves annex countries because they can. Would also provide more ammo to the anti-NATO/US factions in the West (who don't necessarily love Putin all that much, either) who see NATO/US as just a bunch of warmongers. If we want to continue playing this as "we are the good guys" then we really have to play by the rules. As hard as it is and knowing that Putin doesn't.

I thought so but was unsure about whether a) the RA it's actually still applying Soviet doctrine b) does it properly and c) if those EW assets are indeed higher level.

I don't know, I seem to remember quite a few reports saying that Ukraine generally struggles with coordination above a certain level. Doesn't mean Russia is any good at this, either. Not sure what is meant here but EW assets are usually higher level assets, right?