Butschi

Artillery deployed drones.

There. I can have the cake and eat it.

More seriously, there's inevitably going to be a blurry line between smart submunitions and drones at some point.

How is this really a problem, though? I mean, it's not like we paid money up front or something. Sure, we don't get our curiosity satisfied but that is all the hurt that is done, right?
Some do, some don't. Communication costs money, either because the devloper can't spend the time used for communication on finishing the product or because a dedicated communications guy is hired. You invest the money if you think it pays off. You keep potential customers up to date to get the hype train started, to get feedback early on or to find investors, for instance. But this is a double-edged sword. The hype train, once going, is hard to stop or to steer in another direction and customers, especially in gaming, get hyped about what they want to hear not what was actually said. Feedback is rarely representative because it is usually a loud minority that demands X and claims to speak for the whole community. And then there is always the danger that people form a negative opinion based on a product they've never actually seen and won't buy it later when it is released.
I just develop a stupid little tool in my free time and I am very cautious about when and what to tell you guys. 😉

Also, while we all want to know how long we have to wait, I'll take "when it's done" over a fixed release date at which the product has to ship at all costs every time if it ensures the product is properly finalized.
 

I think the first couple paragraphs of your response are a version of the "XY problem" that's usually a form of: non-expert asks expert "how do I do X" or "can you help fix my thing that's supposed to do X", when the only reason they're doing X in the first place is that they really want to do Y and X is the only way they know how to do it.  An expert will tell them how to do X.  A system engineer will poke at their brain for a while to understand why they want to do X and figure out that the real goal is Y, and there are three other ways Z, A, and B to do Y that are all more effective and less hassle.
I don't think the energy thing is a red herring, so much as system energy comes in complicated ways.  Energy arguments are very useful in all sorts of things, including physics based sensors, function of biological systems, logistics, and weapons systems.  For a given volume you can pack in some amount of energy if you're working with readily available sources - petrochemicals, batteries, and high and low explosives are probably the main ones here.  How you choose to spend that energy is a discriminator among systems.
Artillery, for example, uses most of it in two big (and short) bangs - one of propellant to get the shell moving, and another to make a mess at the other end.  But with modern ISR, electronics, sensors, and control systems you can use some of the energy of that initial propulsion bang to maneuver the shell in the air - either to extend its range or to fine guide itself to a target.  But you have to be careful spending that, because every maneuver to change direction costs you some of that energy.  Hypersonic missiles have the same limitation - sure, they go stupid fast.  But every time you try to change direction of something going that fast you have to stick a finger out in the wind and use up some of that energy (and speed).  And the maneuvering cost is very non-linear in how fast you're going, so a just few maneuvers at high speed gets very expensive.  And pretty soon you just look like another dumb glide or ballistic missile and get shot down by some borrowed Patriot system.
 

Maybe?  To my mind, setting aside the whole “loose nukes” problem which is definitely a global destabilizing issue, I think it is a question of good ole money.  With a functioning and weakened central Russia state apparatus, China can cut deals to access Russian energy with a macro organization that can still marshal the infrastructure and security to access that energy and sell it to China.
If Russia tumbles into a bunch of provinces/regions/warlords access to that energy gets a lot harder and more expensive.  China would have to negotiate with a bunch of goons of various levels of stability (and possibly in conflict with each other) to try and get the energy out of Russia and back into China.  Also smaller warlords cannot necessarily run oil and gas industries.  China might have to go all Africa and go in and do it themselves.  This all drives the access cost up.
China may be able to do some land grabs.  But these come with all sorts of problems, not the least of which are a bunch of angry Russians.  I think we have a fundamental flaw in our western thinking that nations invade other nations for resources.  I mean, “yes” technically it can still happen, but in this day and age it is far more advantageous just to have a target nation roll over and sell you the stuff while they also go to the trouble of taking it out of the ground too.  China has seen what “you break it you buy it” looks like from our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I am not entirely sure they are ready to jump on a colonial bandwagon.  Especially in a failed-state Russia - this is akin to trying to bathe a cougar, sounds like fun right up until the damn thing starts getting wet.  
But hey, could be China has done the math and thinks it might work out.  But I still lean toward China is looking to make lemonade out of Russian lemons at this point.

This is how it’s done. Respectful, illuminating and useful. Thanks, lads.

That one I am not so sure of. Setting aside the darkness surrounding a full Russian state collapse, that you have appropriately pointed out, it seems to me that China is actually the one in a position to benefit from that. At least in their near border area they are in a place that the could take over (directly or by proxy) and stabilize huge portions of the country to their exclusive benefit.
Then considering the darkness that may result form a full state collapse China is also the one least effected by those concerns. They have far better and more ruthless control over what nerdowells get up to inside their country and given they could likely stabilize a large portion of the country for their benefit they might skate on the downside of a state wide collapse.

Where did you get the idea? They were very effective as tactical bombers, only vulnerable to interceptors due to low speed. Where the enemy air cover was absent or not effective, StuKas worked very well. 

This is a right wing anti EV trope that Erwin is throwing into the pot, as is his Hydrogen BS as a viable (it's not) alternative to EVs.
He has been watching too much FOX news and has made a Mish mash post...
I bet if I spent some time down a dark rabbit hole I could find the people spewing this nonsense...
But of course Erwin could back up his post with some proof and prove us wrong...

I take offence to the term "research".  I have reviewed your thread and clearly you had a conclusion and then set about picking information to support it.  This is not "research" it is "spinning" - I have failed staff college students for doing what you are proposing as "research", applying half the facts, largely out of context.
For example: "Russia already controls large swathes of Ukraine with valuable minerals..."  and linking this back to Chinese motivation to keep Russia in this war.  This is one enormous theory hanging on very little substance.  We have been through the "Ukrainian goldmine" theory before and it was categorically debunked.
Let's take Metals:
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/72-83_Metals
So before this war Ukraine was already selling Russia about $1B a year in metals and about 345M to China.  A quick scan says it looks like Ukraine was doing about $10B in metal globally.  
Meanwhile China is importing $144B a year in metals globally. Mostly from Indonesia, Congo and Japan:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/metals/reporter/chn?redirect=true  
China does not need Ukrainian metal, they already have global access an order of magnitude beyond the entirety of Ukraine production.
The we get into detail like Titanium.  Yes, Ukraine has got healthy Titanium reserves:
https://inventure.com.ua/en/analytics/articles/titanium-in-ukraine:-military-and-economic-context#:~:text=What are the reserves of,%2C rutile – 2.5 million tons.
About 8.4 million tons.  Wow, sounds like a big number and no doubt Russia and China want to get their greedy hands on it.  Whoops:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/titanium-reserves-country-10-biggest-155049656.html#:~:text=China is the largest producer,largest vanadium-titanium magnetite deposit.
China is the global leader in titanium production. Why on earth do they want more Titanium from Ukraine on the market?
Lithium? Yes. Ukraine has about 500k tons which are largely untapped. Wow that is a big number:
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/lithium-the-link-between-the-ukraine-war-and-the-clean-energy-transition/
Well unless one considers global Lithium reserves - Ukraine has about half as much as Canada:
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/mining-data-statistics-and-analysis/minerals-metals-facts/lithium-facts/24009
You will note that China is sitting on 2M tonnes.
And then there is the thorny issue of where that lithium is located in Ukraine:

https://www.renewablematter.eu/articles/article/ukraine-all-lithium-reserves-and-mineral-resources-in-war-zones
This is where these wingnut theories really break down.  Russia was already occupying a couple of these deposits in Donetsk.  Lets be generous and say they took enough to grab 4 new deposits.  Woo-hoo.  Now a few thorny questions:  what shape is the infrastructure in these areas look like right now?  How much is it going to cost Russia to get these sites up and running?  How much actual money are they going to make from this sweet lithium?  When can they expect to see any money?  And finally, the big one, how much does all that compare to the costs of sustaining this war?  Last count the war in Ukraine was costing Russia between .5-1 B$ per day. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=In November 2022 it was,%24500 million to %241 billion.)
So your theory here is that China is going to spend effort, money and diplomatic points to secure access to lithium, which they do not need and is costing Russia likely far more than it is worth at this point?  In fact the same could be said for just about all Ukrainian metals.
Comparing modern day China to Nazi-Germany is just plain dumb.  Maybe pre-WW1 Germany - ignoring socialist ideologies and about four thousand years of history and culture.  The idea that China somehow masterminded this whole thing (with zero proof, I might add) is laughable.  China is stuck on the other side of this mess and is trying to deal with it on their end. They are going to pursue and promote their interests, just like we are.
Russia and Putin are throwing up all over themselves in some weird attempt to rebuild an Imperial Russia...and are failing brutally.  Sure, Russia could "hold on" until we see some sort of Armistice.  They will have gained a grand total of an additional 6-7% of Ukraine from what they controlled on 21 Feb 22.  It only cost them around 500k men, most of their modern military equipment and diplomatic/geographic isolation that may last several decades....brilliant. 

I have no idea what point that guy is trying to make.

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?

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?

In most western countries there is clear distinction between nationalism and patriotism, and lack of common understanding of that fact in UA is one of main sources of disagreement between Western and Ukrainian concepts here. To claim there is nothing between nationalism and shapeless global consumer (or Russian puppet) is complete nonsense. Former  search for imagined artificial homogenity, and when it don't find it in reality, it sooner or later want to force it; this lead to persecution of "others" (it's only question of trigger really, not even concrete postulates). While historically normal patriotism is usually rather neutral from moral standpoint. It's different understanding when comes to political taboo in many former USSR states, just like with allowance of Nazi symbolics we talked here many times; here it is complete no-no, while in Eastern Europe it's cool joke worth to paint on tanks- even when half of world watches.
Worth to note Russia officially mix those concepts too; what they officially say and do is in fact often full, shauvinistic nationalism (+ in imperial form) while nobody use that term there, instead talking about being "patriotic" 24h a day. I think binary notions of russophile/nationalist has something to do with lack of development of civic societies in countries under long Kremlin rule, especially in USSR. Lack of middle and balanced way in thinking about how individual can belong to society.
When talking about real foreign extremists (not just guys far-right, but real Neo-nazi, neo-pagans and such) before 2022 we really talk about maybe several hundred people (maybe even less) in both Ukraine and LDPR. It seems that many of them wanted to travel to any war-torn country to live like their imagined uber-Vikings, with little political agenda in fact.
https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/extremist-foreign-fighters-in-ukraine/
I have personally little doubt that White T-Rex (Kapustin, creator of Russian Legion) and his folks in different circumstances could serve for Russians and murder Ukrainians now with pleasure, if it wasn't for Muscovite military to suck so much on organizational and esthetical level. Though his friends swear to God he changed and matured politically.

But isn’t a “domestic” enemy someone whose position is forbidden?  There weren’t a lot of protections granted communists in the US back during the Cold War.  For example, if one was a firm communist they were not going to be employed within the defence department.  Roll forward to modern era, devoted fundamentalist Muslims did not fare much better.  This “freedom” concept really appears to be selective when viewed through a historic lens.  Sure, a US citizen can be free to express whatever they wish, but to do so without consequences from both private and public sectors has clearly been demonstrated as false.  Once a society allows for negative consequences as a result of free speech or association, it is no longer “free”.  This inconsistency appears migratory and frankly unfairly applied historically.  Try being a black civil rights movement in the 1930s in the South.  Not a whole lot of freedom of speech and association in that period for that demographic. LGBTQ in the 50s?
So what, as it relates to this war and situation?  Within the US, and other modern democracies, I do not think this is a case of “autocratic control” but you are very correct in calling it out as a slippery slope.  I think it is a case of “when does speech and association become a threat to national security?”  When is it honest political discourse in an open and fair democracy, and when does it become too dangerous to tolerate?  Obviously sharing information on how to build and deploy a WMD should not be covered in “freedom of speech”.  Nor should sharing of classified information.  But when does political discourse cross that line?
The US currently has elected officials who are pretty actively supporting a foreign powers agenda.  To the point that they are blocking military aid to an ally in the middle of an existential war.  At what point does this stop being “open and free political discourse” and become “paid foreign lies by a domestic enemy?”
I honestly do not know.  I have watched my country wrestle with this.  I think our “hate speech” laws are in fact dangerous.  But clearly there is a point, even within free democracies where we cannot tolerate free expression.  For this war, where that line is drawn could very well impact its outcome and what the region looks like. 

"Denazification" is and always has been a total lie insofar as the idea that it is a legitimate justification for invasion.
On the other hand, it's no secret that there are right-wing extremists in Ukraine.

I think it is the “just one more push” mentality.  The Russian theory of success here is that Ukraine will eventually run out of capability to resist.  They need to keep pushing to that end.  I am also sure there is a dimension of “must continue to demonstrate offensive action” to reinforce the narrative of “Russia cannot be beat”.  
So here we are.

Most of what is labeled AI today is pattern recognition of some sorts. So a cruise missile that can orient itself by looking down and compare that to a map is AI driven.
As soon as you can chat with a missile, bad things happen.
 

Thanks for laying this out so succinctly. You have said them before but with more words and over more than one post :-). I have even pointed out what I am about to before too.
I would add
- restore territorial integrity to the 1991 borders.
Yes, I was paying attention to you when you said the Ukraine might have to settle for less. Yes, I agree you could even be right. Likely right even. I just think it is unfair to leave it off the list. There is a non trivial number of Ukrainians who want that on the list of victory. Outside Ukraine too.
I realize it doesn't mean they can necessarily get it but I think it needs to be there. As you, and others, pointed out they might be better off with some of those regions festering under control of Russia and no longer a drain nor a problem for Kyiv but there is no denying that Ukraine feels aggrieved after the invasion of 2014 and would like to have that restored too.

This is the key point to take away from the rather tedious past couple days on this thread.
The challenging part is that propagandists can come up with reams and reams of verbose, officious-sounding nonsense much faster than anyone can challenge it. This was already the case before large language models made it trivial to create pages of vaguely reasonable-sounding claptrap at the push of a button. Now it is worse. And when those propagandists are also working for authoritarian states that exercise near-totalitarian controls over the media landscape within their borders, they are also able to capture plenty of real-life stories that support the views they want to shape, while suppressing the spread of content that does not.
Out here in the actually-free world, the propaganda coming from these authoritarian government mouthpieces seems laughably ineffective. How could anyone believe something that is such unabashed, unadulterated, full-blown propaganda? They're not even pretending it's otherwise! And yet, people believe it. "Free thinkers" with chips on their shoulders about their own government get bamboozled into believing that they are the ones living in an authoritarian state, actually. And then the "news" coming out of other authoritarian states can surely be no more fake than their own news, and, by the way, what is news other than propaganda, at the core? There are no facts, only interpretations, you see. This is why I don't mind you doubting. What is truth, anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?
It is depressing how many people fall into this hole.
This is not only why it is important to counter the Kremlin's lies, but also to consistently push back against the same kind of democracy-eroding rhetoric coming from media and political figures in parts of the world where there still is freedom of expression and freedom of association and so on. The people pushing it tend to either be useful idiots, or privileged enough (through age, wealth or power) to be insulated from the consequences. In both cases, not the best folks to be looking toward to inform your view of the world.

I think there’s probably an interesting discussion to be had about how best to respond to a threat to a system which many people feel frustrated with or even disenfranchised from entirely.  However I also think there’s a time and a place for that discussion and it probably ain’t while allies are fighting an existential war of defence on their own territory, almost explicitly for the right to try and join the threatened system.
War has a funny way of punishing equivocal responses and that cannot be the fault of those who are attacked.

There is no reasonable critique of the Havana Syndrome claims on the grounds of Russia willingness or ability to directly attack American officials. The big question is if it is scientifically or otherwise plausible. So far, we have only seen effects without evidence of the cause. In addition, we are to believe that Russia has had this capability since perhaps the 1980's, they have been carting it around the world and no revelation of its existence has escaped the waves of file releases, defectors and intense American surveillance of the main enemy.
Is it possible. Sure.
Is it likely?  

I find reading walls of naked opinion (when it even gets that far) as tedious as the next person, so I don’t mean this to sound at all like a rebuke:  however I would argue that it’s important for a forum such as this one, which prides itself on trying to be a rational and open-minded place, to at least engage with dissenting views for those first few rounds that may be necessary to determine whether they are trying to contribute in good faith, or not.  Some people just honestly aren’t aware how to express themselves constructively or struggle to isolate coherent streams of thought if they have a lot going on in their heads at once.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they have nothing of value to add, likely thought that admittedly does seem in many cases.

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.