billbindc

The pithy response: Hostomel and full dress uniforms. https://warontherocks.com/2023/08/the-battle-of-hostomel-airport-a-key-moment-in-russias-defeat-in-kyiv/ https://en.lb.ua/news/2022/03/06/10225_special_operation_forces_russians.html

I think the best way to see someone like MacGregor is that essentially he believes that if America isn't going to look politically/socially/racially like the America he wants then he is quite happy being anti-American. That is the core message one gets from Tucker Carlson now too (National Review elucidates that particular case well: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/we-need-to-talk-about-tucker/ ). Looked at that way, his stances make sense. If America is the vanguard of a world woke dictatorship then Ukraine is the place such a dystopia may be blunted. If the ideological battle is existential, then a little bit of pettifoggery regarding military realities is just the lies that stand guard around the truth.

Almost exactly...and especially in sunk costs of Afghan and Iraq experience in higher echelons.

There's going to be another "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" written for this era...

You have to solve for drones and you have to solve for ISR. That means blowing things up in space and creating a full spectrum solution for drones in EM, interception, shoot down. And you still have to contend with ATGMS, mines, etc. Just a brutal calculus.

I think there’s a difference honestly. In DC I think everyone understands that Zelensky would be crazy to give up anything until negotiations begin in earnest. But there were a lot of folks who were pushing the idea that one big offensive might finish the war. I have to admit I am one of the people who was half persuaded by that thinking given that I was hearing it from some pretty legitimate voices.

Your posts on the characteristics and limitations of drones are very helpful. Keep them coming.

It feels to me that between Wagner's dissolution, Girkin's imprisonment and Murz's suicide, the death knell for 'altruistic' Russian revanchism as been well and full rung. More proof of the demobilized and demobilizing political nature of Putin's sclerotic regime and a very good thing for long term Ukrainian prospects.

It's Flemfire's defense, it is kind of a defense system. Meat based, tragicomic but still...

Well...I suppose now I'm going to have to.

You know, couldn't I just read David Sack's tweets and get all this in 140 characters or less?

Also, you are wrong about, inter alia, your premise that anti-immigrant feeling is based on wage stagnation. That's a rather common and boring canard. https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decades-in-the-us/ And I'm done.

Effective systemic theater countermeasures to FPV drones do not in fact exist yet regardless of what performative bs you spew on this forum. (Brace yourselves boys for a quick assertion-fest featuring nets, shotguns and furious handwaving.)

The fallacy that you are pointing out is one we see with cold fusion, self driving cars, etc. I can't count the amount of times in the last 10 years in which someone says "Well, Silicon Valley (or VC money, or the USG, or China...take your pick) is going all in on X so it's certain to be resolved". That's not how it works. Challenges of that scale and complexity don't just evaporate with money and attention...especially in a case like drones where the challenge hasn't even reach the capabilities we can already see coming around the next iterative bend. The blithe dismissal of the issue with a blank assertion that big militaries with enormous physical and mental investment and successful track records in old ways of making war reminds of me a certain application of élan vital with a result that's more than likely to be similar. No thanks.

Super interesting. Thank you.

A notable detail in this video that’s gone viral this morning is that every single drone feed shows that each on is down to about 3% of power. It’s a fair guess that the Russians imagined this warehouse to be beyond the range of FPV:

FPV dog fights are already a thing:

The Huns, to be clear, collapsed before Rome did.

Two things seem to have to happen in order to attain offensive capability in a big war: 1. Total and full spectrum EW domination. 2. ISR denial. That means space operations, that probably means denial of one’s own drones. It likely also means a whole other suite of sensor jamming per Watling’s envisioned future of sound sensors, etc. In other words, it probably means offense is the privilege of an already pretty dominant military.

I haven't seen it. Just noted a comment he made about it.

Anthony Perpetua is clocking Russian losses at effectively double the Swedish tally. We'll see who is right eventually.

I am hearing that the Russians lost something on the order of 1100 vehicles of various types attacking Avdiivka. If correct, Russia is fighting a war of attrition...against itself.

Indeed it is. A discharge petition is a time consuming process which doesn't start until 218 members physically sign on and actually several votes happen over a couple of weeks so they are hard to sustain because the timing means that leadership has ample opportunity to bear down on the members. In the case of the Israel/Taiwan/Ukraine bill you also won't have perfect unity from Democrats. Several, at least, will object to aid to Israel. So you will need perhaps 6 or 7 Republicans to sustain their position for about 10 days. It's worked once that I know of.

$75 billion in aid and the coordination of another $54 billion or so from our allies but hey, what have you done for me lately? https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts Which is another way to say that if you are concentrating on particular weapons systems instead of aggregate economic/military/diplomatic aid than I think you are doing it wrong. And on that note, I'm going to head out to a very excellent dive bar of my acquaintance with some friends and drink to the $450 million or so that some old pro-Putin bastard lost in court in NY today. Cheers.