billbindc

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.

Remember the people who gave Putin reasons to think that the reaction to Navalny’s death wouldn’t be that significant:

The idea at the moment is to underline both at home and abroad a feeling of futility in Putin's opposition. This was "well" timed in that respect.

It's weird to the point where I don't see the WH being involved. Turner obviously wants to put heat on the America Firsters but at the same time he positioned it as if the administration was asleep at the switch. Seems like too-many-dimensional chess to be a thought out move.

Congress is adjourning until 2/28 and will come back to schedule that compacts two crucial budget votes into the first two weeks. The sudden adjournment is telling...in that moving it forward seems clearly designed to avoid a discharge petition. The story here isn't the self fools...it's that the Speaker of the House is clearly going to avoid giving Ukraine aid at all costs.

The reminder very emphatically did not come from the White House. It came from GOP Rep Mike Turner and Jake Sherman actually did a press briefing to express bewilderment that a Republican on the Gang of Eight would publicize the secret subject of a meeting scheduled for the following day.

Maybe but it has to be said that the GOP side of the House isn't notable for its strategic nous. The freak outs about EMP's have been a long running theme in right wing fever dreams and this could simply be that playing out. On such absurd foundations does the future sometimes lie.

What's interesting about this...and the above is pretty certainly what the flap is about...is that it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The entire Russian way of war has been entirely invalidated by the ubiquitous ISR of American satellites. In a big war with the West, they simply couldn't hope to fight without countering it.

No. Just terminally outside his lane. Social media melts people's brains.

World famous tire guy Trent Telenko took the bait so bad it's going to require major surgery to get the hook out of his entrails: