Butschi

And we are back to why it is not "ok" for fighting aged males to be hanging out in other countries while Russia mauls their home nation.  Regardless, we will have to see how this develops.  What is odd is not only how the Kharkiv thing has gone off, but why there?  A major urban center is not a place to try for a break out,  There is a lot of open country side on this extremely long frontage, so why move there.  Obvious answer is to freak out the Ukrainians and force them to push resources to respond.  Straight up war-by-terror, threaten large civilian populations, get a reaction that forces resource reallocation.
So my next thought is "to what end?"  If the RA can actually pull the UA back enough they might get an operational collapse they can exploit.  But what does that look like?  The RA has not demonstrated any acumen on operational level manoeuvre since Feb '22, and "acumen" is a gross overcompliment based on how that went.  Since then they have collapsed, harassed, denied, and made minor tactical gains.  So we really do not know if they can really exploit what they are doing here.
But let's not drink the copium too deeply. This is strategic/operational shaping by the RA. The fact that they still have the initiative and are able to do this is not good news.  Now shaping is not an immediate sign of success - ask Lee at Gettysburg - but it definitely demonstrates that the Russians are still in this thing.  The UA needs to remobilize and quickly.  They have ISR but it appears to be watching the RA walk forward.  They need capability at this point to counter.
No matter how one spins it, this proxy war just took a weird turn.  So here I agree with FancyCat - West needs to stop playing grab @ss and get back into this game or things could get very bad, very quickly.

I think it's a bit funny that you take this as an example. A bamboo forest is 'real world terrain', but let's fly this swarm in a fir forest for a laugh.
Impressive as this video is, it is a prepared demonstration, as is the Boxers'. We will never know how often they tried until they got one without a drone crashing.
The Boxer demo is nothing more than an ad. And we all have seen enough of those to know what the difference between an ad and reality is. Now, some here seem to think that everyone who says, that this update is a good thing, has fallen for it and thinks this is the new Wunderwaffe that will end the war.
Nope. I just think this is a good update to an existing system that makes it better. It will help in some situations and won't in others. That is all.
 
Btw.: for once the Germans did not totally overengineer something and just went with what was available, and yet you still don't like it...
 
 

The ridicule wasn't on the poor Boxer, it was on the test and video.  This is the tech porn that gets rolled out at every trade show as industry tries to sell something because they built it, not because it will work.
Things have "essentially changed" and we need some serious rethinks - that is my premise after watching this war very closely for over two years.  Now there are two camps around this: those who agree and those who disagree.  For those who disagree some just have not seen enough evidence...ok, well time will tell.  And then there are those who disagree because they do not want it, no matter what, for any number of reasons.
 If history is any indication, we will take an agonizing long and expensive route to shift to wherever war is shifting towards.  But warfare shifts.  It has in my lifetime and will continue to.  I can recall old officer's and NCOs decrying that "GPS is just a fad!  Gimme a map and compass!" Ok, fine, whatever.
I would like to think we can all agree that the shifts in this war alone have been awe inspiring even if what we do about them is unclear.  
 

It you see the problem of course, an automated massive gun on a heavy platform.  Gimme a good old M2 on some cheap truck with an auto targeting turret.  Then if we get it wrong it does not cost a multimillion dollar platform.
The idea of an automated turret is not a bad one but this was a clear BS demo as it manages to shoot down drones flying in a neat little line.  In reality they are going to come in fast and low from every direction.  That Boxers turret will be spinning like mad.  Or we will see a ground formations like B17s blazing away in all directions.  Better than nothing but not the solution.  
As I have said before the damned solution is other UAS that can track and engage incoming FPVs, likely fully autonomous.  Put em up like CAP and go from there.  Now what we put in the center of the bubble remains the major question. Could be Boxers, could be lighter armoured track like those BVs.
Why is it some people appear to take this personally?  Look at the battlefield.  Look at what has been happening for over two years now.  More important look at was not been happening.  This is not like we have seen a few snapshots and are wildly extrapolating. We have watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of examples, too many to fake. The evidence is too great here that the battlefield has shifted…ok, so what?  We get on with dealing with it.

So yeah, why not just have paper targets and some schnitzel and riesling and be done with it. This is a convincing sales pitch to absolutely nobody. Some duck hunters could do about the same in the same time.
And dropping grenades and whatnot from the top.
This is a ****ty demo. It’s worse than the homebuilt RC turrets people stuck paintballs and airsoft guns to 10-20 years ago that were computer-vision driven. Those things could at least track fast moving targets.

Ok, we got 7 points from Ukraine in the ESC. That assures future German support.

I keep thinking that.  They'll run out of arty tubes, IFVs & tanks, we think, based on the loss rates.  But I also keep questioning whether we are being the german general staff circa 1941/2, where we continually think they are running out of everything but turns out.....
 

This! The National prejudice attitude that many on this forum seem to have toward Russians tends to color their comments and lead them to dehumanize and demonize the Russian people as ignorant savages who are always drunk, raping and killing babies. Yes, possibly the conscripts and prisoner “volunteers” are more brutal and resigned to their deaths than seems the norm. Can you say Igor Sikorsky, Tolstoy, Tchikovsky? Not everyone is ignorant, uneducated, and brutal. No one should be surprised by Russians who make intelligent and insightful statements. I see the same ignorant and prejudicial statements about every opponent the U.S. has ever faced. It’s much easier to kill a fellow Human being when you make that person out to be so inferior to you.

I'm more or less speculating here. GPS is much simpler and needs way less computing power. Given that some high end mobile phones already have dedicated chips for that computer vision stuff, computing power is, I guess, not a show stopper. The precision and/or reliability part is where I am sceptical. Well, depends on what kind of PGM we are talking here. Artillery, where we have to identify the spot where the shell is supposed to land or more like a cruise missile, flying horizontally?
In autonomous driving, not having to rely on HD maps is what we all think we have to be able to do. Simply because keeping them up to date doesn't scale very well. Guess what, we are all still using HD maps. Using computer vision for navigation by landmarks is one thing. But I think we are talking more talking about something on the level of route planning here (so more like knowing in which street I am currently driving - behind that church tower turn left). Using computer vision for precise position estimation to replace GPS requires again very precise maps - you have to know where all those landmarks are exactly and - if we are not talking about generic things like poles (lamp posts, signs, etc.) you have to have a database against which to compare. Let's ignore that because maybe I am thinking too complicated here.
The real issue, again extrapolating from autonomous driving, is, I think weather/lighting conditions. Rain, darkness or glare, etc. very adversly affect performance. In your car you can mitigate these issues by switching on your headlights but that is probably not an option for PGMs.
EDIT: And while I keep saying, war is not autonomous driving, lower levels of reliability are acceptable, PGMs are precisle where we need high precision and reliabilty.

I guess a problem for reporting losses by respectable media outlets is that you can't really verify the numbers. Both sides lie, and they would be nuts if they didn't. So there are basically only rumors to report, and it's IMHO better that they don't.
Another problem is sources. If the news channels don't have their own teams, they have to use 'official' material. Again, that will be propaganda from both sides, some side more than the other (ahem).
We are used to watching Twitter videos. But those are all 'unverified' and you can understand them only in context. Another thing that makes them unusable for mass media.
This war is a difficult topic. Even though this is the one war since WWII where it's clearest which side are the baddies.

So this post and the one above it are what we like to call “losing the bubble”.  You have let your passion for Ukraine cloud objective strategic thinking to the point that you are proposing a denial of reality to insert one of your own that matches that passion.  In blunt terms, if you were on my staff I would be thinking you need a vacation and maybe a posting away for awhile.
1.  We cannot simply discount/avoid/wave away the risks of a full on Russian political and social collapse.  First off it is not “impossible” or even improbable given we have a rigid autocratic political mechanism that has been under significant strain for some time now.  Russia has collapsed in the past (twice in the past century and a bit) and can do so again.  
2.  The consequences of a Russian collapse cannot simply be waived away either.  At best we get a stable regime quickly grabbing power so that the centralized control apparatus stays in place.  That regime will need to 1) have clean enough hands to do an honest deal with, and 2) be supportive in stopping this war.  That is a tall order. Follow on scenarios of a Russian collapse and its impacts get worse from there and we have gone into them many times.  You are essentially so gripped with the Ukrainian cause that you have simply stated “ignore them” with neither proof or logic on why to do so beyond “well it hasn’t happened yet, so it will never happen”.
3.  By your metrics Ukrainian security is not guaranteed outside of a full Russian collapse and regime change.  Nothing would stop Russia from lobbing missiles even if it was forced back to 2014 lines.  So we are back to “we need a full Russian collapse to ‘win’ but ignore the consequences of that collapse because = ‘love Ukraine’.” That makes no sense nor does it address the scenarios where a collapsed Russia poses as greater risk to Ukraine than what they are dealing with now. 
4.  There are plenty examples of frozen conflict where an enduring peace and security were guaranteed: Korea, Cyprus and Former Yugoslavia, to name a few.  Like Israel right now, there is always risk of reemergence of warfare but we can manage that.  So immediately writing off any and all other peace scenarios is not only extremist narrative, it is dangerously reductive thinking.  This is not how high levels of diplomacy, defence and security or economics think about the world, it is how college students on a campus do.
5.  Your position and thesis essentially start with a conclusion and then build a logic model theory of success that only supports that conclusion.  Ukraine must have total victory, all other outcomes are defeats.  Further the West must support Ukraine in this venture to the point that it will risk the total political and social collapse of a nuclear power.  We are to sidestep all that risk for Ukraine.  What happens if we get to 2014 lines and Russia does not quit?  Do we need to go into Russia proper?  This nearly happened in Korea/China in 1950, this was how MacArther talked himself into nuclear weapons and a massive Chinese reaction.
6. We all support Ukraine and want a victory here.  But..and you really need to sit down and think about this…Ukraine is damned important, but it is not that important.  We are not going to start WW3 over Ukraine - even as we skirt around it.  We would be talking hundreds of millions of deaths, even if the thing stayed conventional.  We have 8 billion people on this planet and keeping them all alive takes a lot of energy and resources.  We built a highly complex and integrated system to keep the whole dance going.  One war breaks out between Ukraine and Russia and we already have people starving to death in Africa. Imagine a full on conflagration that drags in NATO. Iran and possibly China.  I am sorry but we could easily go with plan A, which was likely the plan on 24 Feb 22: continue to support Ukrainian resistance, fall back to NATO lines, drop a new Iron Curtain, and fund the hell out of NATO - in fact there are likely big winners in this scenario who know it.  We won the First Cold War, we can take our chances on a Second.
So, no, total 2014 lines are not the only victory in this war by a long shot.  In fact those territorial lines might not even mean victory if they were attainable.  We are very likely looking at a stop line, like in 2014, somewhere in the middle.  Then we will get some sort of shaky ceasefire that we will need to exploit, quickly.  We need to set the conditions to strategically deny Ukraine from Russia.  We know Russia can be deterred, this is why we do not have deep strikes into Poland happening.  We will need to move that deterrence line.  We will likely have to pound Russia until it drops its ridiculous negotiating position and we can land on something more reasonable.  Whether that will take a full on collapse is unknown, we can only hope if it does that we are looking at a soft collapse of political position and not social controls within Russia.
Finally, framing the war the way you have supports Russia.  You are making this war nearly unwinnable via these maximalist rhetoric.  As such, a reader of this thread could easily walk away agreeing with you but arriving at a very different conclusion - unwinnable war = GTFO, because we have already seen this movie twice in the last 20 years.  Which is exactly what Russia wants.
You have narrowed down the acceptable narrative only to those ardent extremist viewpoints that agree with you.  By leaving no middle ground you violate a core component of war: negotiation.  There is no negotiation in your position and that immediately sets off warning bells.  We hear this everyday now coming from all sorts of corners over so many issues.  I vehemently disagree with your analysis, narrative and conclusions based on this fact alone.

It's probably a symptom of heavy fighting and the casualties that comes with them. People don't have time to upload videos to youtube while fighting in trenches.
Also bear in mind that ATGMs can't really be crowdsourced, while consumer off-the-shelf FPV drones can be, so propaganda efforts may be directed towards those (a phenomenon alluded to by Mike Kofman and Rob Lee).

This is very true...
Alas the number of locomotives they would have to destroy is a massive percentage as all that will happen is that they don't use them for the passenger duty or non essential trains.
Also as numbers dwindle it becomes easier to protect those left.
Of course any loss is going to have an effect but not necessarily directly on supplies heading to the front.
Friction certainly helps but it is not the answer alone.

The Russians already knew that ATACMS could attack the bridge and since the bridge is officially still on Ukraine's territory they didn't need a green light from anyone. Ukraine could always attack its own territory with western weapons.
So explicitly stating the fact only does, as the_capt would say, enlarge the uncertainty space for Russia.
Btw, are those arches only decorative or are they a structural necessity for the bridge? I would imagine they are easier to hit than a pillar and easier to damage. Even something like napalm may weaken the strength of the steel enough.

In what universe is Switzerland not considered to be a “Full Democracy”? It’s literally a confederation with direct democracy, and has been for longer than most countries have even had the concept of elections.
EDIT: I also do wonder about Japan being considered more democratic by some numeric ranking than the US, when Japan is basically a one party state.

And my point is that upward trend can only be sustained if we work for it and defend it.  Democracy is not the natural state of large scale human affairs or political systems.  History demonstrates quite the opposite.  The hope was that literacy and enlightenment would allow for greater informed choice by the masses but as we have just discussed there are some serious issues in the modern age with this.
Democracy using a much longer lens than even the last 100 years is a great experiment, not ordained by higher powers or a natural evolution that is enshrined in post-modern reality.  It takes work and sacrifice, it is not an entitlement.  Basically this could be the end of democracy if we sit back and let it happen. There is real danger in simply shrugging and declaring “slight dip” as if the upward trajectory is driven by greater forces.  Democracy will only survive if we want it to and make it happen.  We have seen it tried before in both Ancient Greece and Rome - albeit in different forms - and we abandoned it.  We can do it again…unless we consciously do not let it happen.

"Tearing it down" will introduce massive collective uncertainty into the last global superpower and roughly 330 million primates...many armed to the teeth.  It does not take a "smart and truly good person" to see how that will likely go.
The American Experiment is, at its roots, a massive social test.  A test to see if our species has evolved to the point where a power sharing scheme like democracy can survive at scale.  I would say the jury is still out.

It is potentially worse than that.  This sort of dysfunction does nothing but feed anti-democracy sentiment.  Democracies die due to abandonment, history demonstrates this quite well.  If the system is seen as "unworkable" democracies often choose suicide.  This is the threat to the US and global stability.  Trump and Greene are symptoms of something far deeper and dangerous....apathy that leads to despair.

Then they came for der Mittelstand....
I keep posting energy tech stuff because the modular/miniature/precision armaments revolution is absolutely experiencing the exact same dynamics, just not so well documented (yet).
The West will innovate, but the Chinese will beat us to mass market, every time. With quality more than adequate for purpose. As innovative firms and their ecosystems starve and die, so too will innovation.
Solar panels are now used as fences in Germany because they are more affordable than the usual fencing.
The market standard for solar panels is now moving to Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (#TOPCon) technology, which improves solar cell architecture to reduce efficiency losses.
The technology was developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute in 2013, but large-scale manufacturing takes place mostly in China.
"European manufacturers have no money to change to the new technology. So now there is no competitive advantage anymore and they have to sell old technology."
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/squeeze-on-european-solar-manufacturers-curbs-innovation-cementing-china-s-lead-81072375


 

Drones could just identify landmarks, or have integrated satellite pictures or other type of maps that help it with navigation.

You do realize that this is basically the same propaganda that Putin uses?
And that is the seed of how war crimes happen.

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.

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?
And that is the seed of how war crimes happen.