Billy Ringo

To my mind these kinds of things are highly revealing because, to external eyes, they clearly *weaken* Russia's nuclear deterrent.  How so?  Because by building tank traps a distance behind the Russian border they are implicitly agreeing to fight a conventional conflict over Russian land.  The concurrent implication is therefore that any invasion of Russian soil will not necessarily be met by a nuclear response.
Now I am not for a moment thinking that's the intended message, nor that Western leadership should or will read it that way.  That's what's interesting: this seems to me clearly (as is often the case with these things) intended almost entirely for internal Russian consumption.  Either:
1. To help address growing fears of those in the Kursk region that the Ukraine 'SMO' is not going well and it is not going well near their homes, or...
2. To encourage a bit of fear in the locals of Kursk and maybe elsewhere (how widely within Russia is this effort being reported?) in order to reinforce the idea that this is an existential war for Russia and that they are responding to an external threat.
My money's on #2 but it would be interesting if this level of investment and action was considered necessary because of #1.
Someone mentioned a few pages back that Russia has not begun to negotiate with itself around possible defeat, yet.  I think this kind of action has to be seen as internal communication at the expense of the most effective possible external communication and is therefore symptomatic of an ongoing internal Russian war negotiation which at the very least is preparing the stage for a potential future defeat negotiation.

This really can't be over emphasized. You simply cannot maintain a mechanized force in the field without the ability to defend against these kinds of drones. Furthermore these drones are going to improve rapidly, to include autonomous operation and true swarming behavior. U.S. may be worried about the legal/moral issues involved, it is laughable to think the Chinese will pause over it for a second. We have talked a lot of different drone defense regimes, all of them, and combinations of all of them, need to be rigorously tested until we find something that works, and that something has to be produced at scale. By scale I mean the ability to protect your side of the entire FEBA for at least tens of kilometers in depth. Yes this will be heart stompingly expensive, but the alternative is losing the next war.
We seem to have decent confirmation their are at least two fully trained up Bradley battalions in Ukraine. If they have not been committed it is pretty close to proof that the AFU staff don't see anything to really panic about yet. And if I were the Russians I would be seriously considering a bit of panic, if at least 50,000 casualties worth of winter offensive cant even make the Ukrainians commit their better reserves, It is worth pointing out that several recent deliveries/announcements include breaching equipment
Last but not least the new Italian Prime minister is not without flaws, but she is extraordinarily solid on Ukraine. 
 

Did someone say supply chain???
The challenge is not just what "products don't belong within a just in time model", but what products go into the products that make up the products....especially as it relates to machine, industrial, automotive, trucking, etc. parts.
Most parts/components wholesalers don't operate on Just-in-Time and carry inventory bolstered by safety stock, (based on lead time variations and demand fluctuations).  That inventory lasted about 6-9 months before the real effects of Covid/supply disruptions of 2021-2022 hit.   After that, they were jumping through all kinds of hoops to source anything they could from anywhere.  (Even buying assembled products to dis-assemble into in-demand components.)
All it takes is one component of a semi-complex assembly to stop the entire production line.  (Automotive, transmission, HVAC, industrial supply, etc. wholesalers may stock between 20,000 to 250,000 different products/SKUs in a single location.) 
As a side note, this is why I still think Russia is going to crash at some point as enough critical parts/components used in transportation/manufacturing will finally become unavailable, shutting down production lines.

Did Zelensky ever talk to Xi?  Were supposed to talk after Xi's meeting with Putin but can't find anything on a call.
And then there's this, Xi not wasting any time taking advantage of Russia's newfound problems.   Et tu, Stan?
Xi snubbed Putin after their summit, calling a meeting of Central Asian countries as part of an audacious power play
https://www.yahoo.com/news/xi-snubbed-putin-summit-calling-123050319.html

Did someone say supply chain???
The challenge is not just what "products don't belong within a just in time model", but what products go into the products that make up the products....especially as it relates to machine, industrial, automotive, trucking, etc. parts.
Most parts/components wholesalers don't operate on Just-in-Time and carry inventory bolstered by safety stock, (based on lead time variations and demand fluctuations).  That inventory lasted about 6-9 months before the real effects of Covid/supply disruptions of 2021-2022 hit.   After that, they were jumping through all kinds of hoops to source anything they could from anywhere.  (Even buying assembled products to dis-assemble into in-demand components.)
All it takes is one component of a semi-complex assembly to stop the entire production line.  (Automotive, transmission, HVAC, industrial supply, etc. wholesalers may stock between 20,000 to 250,000 different products/SKUs in a single location.) 
As a side note, this is why I still think Russia is going to crash at some point as enough critical parts/components used in transportation/manufacturing will finally become unavailable, shutting down production lines.

Did Zelensky ever talk to Xi?  Were supposed to talk after Xi's meeting with Putin but can't find anything on a call.
And then there's this, Xi not wasting any time taking advantage of Russia's newfound problems.   Et tu, Stan?
Xi snubbed Putin after their summit, calling a meeting of Central Asian countries as part of an audacious power play
https://www.yahoo.com/news/xi-snubbed-putin-summit-calling-123050319.html

Did someone say supply chain???
The challenge is not just what "products don't belong within a just in time model", but what products go into the products that make up the products....especially as it relates to machine, industrial, automotive, trucking, etc. parts.
Most parts/components wholesalers don't operate on Just-in-Time and carry inventory bolstered by safety stock, (based on lead time variations and demand fluctuations).  That inventory lasted about 6-9 months before the real effects of Covid/supply disruptions of 2021-2022 hit.   After that, they were jumping through all kinds of hoops to source anything they could from anywhere.  (Even buying assembled products to dis-assemble into in-demand components.)
All it takes is one component of a semi-complex assembly to stop the entire production line.  (Automotive, transmission, HVAC, industrial supply, etc. wholesalers may stock between 20,000 to 250,000 different products/SKUs in a single location.) 
As a side note, this is why I still think Russia is going to crash at some point as enough critical parts/components used in transportation/manufacturing will finally become unavailable, shutting down production lines.

Did someone say supply chain???
The challenge is not just what "products don't belong within a just in time model", but what products go into the products that make up the products....especially as it relates to machine, industrial, automotive, trucking, etc. parts.
Most parts/components wholesalers don't operate on Just-in-Time and carry inventory bolstered by safety stock, (based on lead time variations and demand fluctuations).  That inventory lasted about 6-9 months before the real effects of Covid/supply disruptions of 2021-2022 hit.   After that, they were jumping through all kinds of hoops to source anything they could from anywhere.  (Even buying assembled products to dis-assemble into in-demand components.)
All it takes is one component of a semi-complex assembly to stop the entire production line.  (Automotive, transmission, HVAC, industrial supply, etc. wholesalers may stock between 20,000 to 250,000 different products/SKUs in a single location.) 
As a side note, this is why I still think Russia is going to crash at some point as enough critical parts/components used in transportation/manufacturing will finally become unavailable, shutting down production lines.

At one stage, we were cannibalising already-built machines sitting in the "shipping yard" for parts to get further machines off the assembly line. 

Add to this a complete lack of any reasonable evidence that Russia would have somehow left Ukraine alone had the West not allowed Eastern European nations into the organization.  A lot of people have brought up the Budapest Memo as evidence the West left Ukraine hanging, but the violation of that agreement by Russia, first in 2014 and now is clear evidence that Russia was never going to "let sleeping dogs lie" if we had kept our hands off.  I argue we likely saved more lives by pulling in Estonia and Latvia (among others).
The only reason to frame this discussion as somehow a result of Western aggression is to try and justify Russian motivations, and the OP has a history of doing exactly that in a somewhat ham-handed anti-US/western narrative.  Putin is a genocidal monster who is waging an illegal war well outside the bounds of the LOAC.  Any righteous casus belli Russia may have had (and it didn't) prior to this war flew out the window at Bucha and the extremely long list of illegal warfare Russia has waged - to the point the ICC has indicted a sitting head of state.
So even if we except this bizarro logic, it is irrelevant to any future analysis, beyond informing us that a strategy of appeasement 1) won't work and 2) We probably should have worked harder to contain Russia, not less because it is pretty clear their military, at least, is operating on a medieval warfare framework.  I would also say that whatever box we put Russia into after this is over needs to be airtight, at least until Russia as a nation can demonstrate that it is ready to join the rest of civilization.
Post-war I am extremely worried as the viable strategic option space that sees Russia as a functioning nation heading back towards some sort of rational normalization is getting smaller and smaller.  Our ability to create a soft landing for Russia that it will not simply try to exploit is also getting harder and harder to see.  Dumping the whole thing on China's doorstep is not a bad idea but re-containment of Russia will have to be on the menu, right along with regime change.  Trying to engineer a nation is extremely hard, but that is what this is looking more and more what is going to be required in order to secure Ukraine and ensure Russia does not completely fly apart and make everything worse.

Wait for it...Cuba!  The long held cry of the first year poli-sci student.  "But what if Russia pulled Cuba into a collective defence treaty?!"  Or Mexico?  Or Canada.  What if Canada suddenly joined the Russian Federation of Happy Happy Nations Who Totally Do Not Have A Gun To Their Heads?  Would not the US go into a rage and invade? 
To be honest, probably not.  Why because even though the US has played fast and loose with the rules on occasion, they know they cannot totally throw them out or risk the entire scheme.  What they would do is cut off trade and bankrupt us over a weekend, but that is what big-boy powers do, they employ legal mechanisms to punish and keep in line. 
They do not roll in and invade (oh and here we will go with Grenada and Panama - sure a rogue narco-dictator and coup by a military junta (the OECS also signed off on that one) interventions are the same as Ukraine, not apples to hand grenades at all.)  Like in 03 in Iraq, the US bent the rules and maybe even broke them.  To put them in the same legal house as what is happening in Ukraine is just dumb. Putin tried for a weak R2P, and then started hammering baby hospitals - he is not even in the same league...and this was after we let him get away with Georgia and Crimea.
If Russia and Putin were so smart - and here I will ask forgiveness of Ukrainian members in advance as offering too much on "how Russia could have won this thing" is a little insensitive in the middle of a war, but so is trying to excuse the Russian invasion by blaming it on the West...and by extension Ukraine itself - they would have engineered an internal crisis in Ukraine (again) and then used that as an excuse to intervene.  But that flat-faced a@@hat did not even have the decency to do that.  He played "we are only on exercise" for months and then went "f#ck it, its Tuesday".
So here we are again with the "its all your fault" faction somehow linking the actions of free, stable and independent nations with varying degrees of democratic process to somehow "making" Russia do this horrible war.  It does not match history, nor does it make any sense in terms of how this war actually started. 
I re-iterate, there was no crisis.  It was not like Ukraine was in Brussels with pen in hand hovering over the NATO parchment.  There were no Nazis, or black bio-weapon sites, nor elite conspiracies or alien brain slugs controlling in the background.  We had a dictator pushing 70, looking for domestic power shoring exercise who thought he could totally get away with it, and then let his cronies convince him of what he wanted to hear.  The West had sat back fat, dumb and happily buying his gas and turning blind eyes, until we didn't - Putin thought Ukraine would be Czechoslovakia and what he got was Poland....that is about it.  No appeasement would have worked, there is zero evidence of this.  In fact Crimea demonstrates the exact opposite.
But hey, it is another Tuesday so let's hear the anti-US crowd roll out something new for change....

An irrational and highly unstable geopolitical partner they have to invest more in to prevent from completely falling apart or dragging them into a major war than they can ever expect to get out of?  Or how about a completely fractured former superpower with 6000 loose nukes at their back door?  
Oh goody, it was getting quiet in here…US bashing day.  Yes, please tell us again how this was all the US’s fault for allowing former eastern bloc countries entry into a free and transparent collective defence treaty?  And after those independent and sovereign nations had, of their own free will, decided it was in their best interest to join said collective defence organization. Or why they would want to join said organization in the first place?
Or perhaps a thesis on how the world would be a much better place if we have left them in the cold and trusted Putin to not do this exact same thing in Estonia, Latvia etc?  I mean the guy looks pretty trustworthy based on his performance in this war, right?  Oh that’s right, like a good domestic abuser argument we made him do this.  And if we had only shrank back and stayed out of it the power hungry dictator would have surely been a ok.  
Here is a counter thesis and question - how many Ukrainians would be alive today if we had pulled them into NATO in 2013?  “Oh but look at how unstable and corrupt they were?”…Turkey.  “Oh but it would have made Russia mad and our gas prices go up”…whoops. 

My overall impression is of a disciplined and competent unit. Everyone was clean^, and actions were carried out deliberately and without stress or haste. Everyone appeared calm and relaxed (except that one guy), and they were all comfortable with each other – some banter, but a lot of pretty frank comments about how they’re feeling. The new guys seemed a little stiff, but that’s probably to be expected.
The fact they had some new guys was interesting in itself. Why are the new guys needed - casualties? Promotion? Courses? Relief for leave periods? Siphoning off some experience to raise a new battery?
A lot of the guys seemed pretty old, and kind of chubby? I guess that’s to be expected with mass mobilisation.
Overall this was a very tidy gun position with no trash or dunnage to be seen which is a sign of good discipline, and also an fairly comfortable looking position which is a sign of good morale.
They are carrying personal weapons at all times, which struck me as odd. Could be for the cameras, or could be because of the local ground threat.
I think they’re using encrypted radios? The blerp at the start of each transmission is a bit of a give-away. That’s not super surprising, other than that encrypted radios are not available COTS.

From a specifically gunnery perspective, they were firing at a very low trajectory, and with a time of flight of 29 seconds, which implies they were firing at around 10km (29 seconds time of flight, firing Charge 1 so probably around 300 m/s). But that’s a hearty guess since I don’t know the specifics of the gun/round/charge combos for the D-30. Low trajectory is good practice since it makes it harder for the enemy to sense any outgoing rounds.
The battery was set up in a woodland, which was unusual since it severely restricts your traverse - you can’t just bang a round away in any direction since it’ll probably slam into a tree a few 10s of metres away and really ruin your day. Given a static front that kind of makes sense – “all our targets are in a narrow arc in that direction” - but it does mean that this battery can’t really support any units to the flanks of the one it’s been assigned to.
It looked like they were using time fuses, although again I’m not really familiar with Russian ammunition. There was a shot where a guy was fiddling with a tool on the nose of the round at around 6:39, and the tool he’s using appears to have calibration marks on it. On Western ammo that’s the kind of thing you’d use to set the time fuze length^^, whereas switching between PD and Delay is a simple screwdriver turn between two positions and would be a completely different fuse (you can turn a time fuze into a PD fuse by zeroing the timer, but they usually don’t also have a Delay setting. Also, time fuzes are relatively rare, so you’d only use them when air burst was called for.)
It seems they are concerned about counter battery (CB) fire, since they moved into a shelter immediately after the mission, but not THAT concerned since they’ve been in the same positions for several months. There also didn’t appear to be much ground churn (from incoming rounds) but that could be due to fresh recent snow covering any wounds to the ground since there also didn’t appear to be many random tracks about the place. Mind you, that – the lack of tracks - could alternately be due to really good discipline and morale, and the guys really sticking to the track plan. Or discipline + fresh snow.
I didn’t see any evidence of vehicles – either trucks dug in or hiding under cam nets, or vehicle tracks anywhere. That implies the battery isn’t moving anytime soon, and also that the guys are having to hump ammo in from some distance away. It also implies that they – or rather their higher command – are confident that the Russians will not be breaking in or through anywhere nearby anytime soon. Raids; yes – they specifically talk about that. But no movement of the FEBA.
Given they’ve been there for a couple of months, I would expect that they have a very long list of pre-registered targets, which greatly reduces (effectively eliminates) the need to adjust before going to fire for effect (FFE).
Although only one gun was show I would expect that there was a whole battery (probably 4 guns) hidden in the trees thereabouts, although probably very dispersed. I think that because the battery commander was there, and the command post (CP) looked fairly substantial for something that was only controlling a single gun. I am assuming here that the film crew walked between the gun they filmed at, and the underground battery CP and the underground CB shelter. If, on the other hand, they drove between CP and the gun then all bets are off, but I think driving is unlikely given the radios being used – those small handhelds don’t have great ranges, especially in trees.
All the round detonations you hear are of single rounds. That suggests that this gun could indeed be a pistol gun off on it’s lonesome away from the rest of the battery, OR that they are engaging a very small or point target like an isolated building, OR in response to a very local probe. But given the weather – bright sun, middle of the day – I’d be a bit surprised if the Russians were up and moving about with small numbers of light infantry, so my guess would either be a destruction mission on a building or the like, or they’re doing a technical shoot to figure out exactly what the weather conditions are doing to the flight of the rounds right now. Those technical shoots are important since it means that engaging any targets off the pre-registered list can go to FFE immediately, which decreases the response time from ~5-10 mins to ~1min including time of flight. That would also explain the generally unhurried and relaxed attitude of the guys – when a battery is firing in support of friendly forces in contact there is a certain ... tenseness, which is absent here.
Jon

^ that could also be because they tidied up the house, washed and had haircuts before visitors came over. But I don’t think it’s just that – you can tell a soldier to go have a wash, but that wouldn’t explain the calmness.
^^ although the fuzes I’m used to have the time setting marks on the fuze itself, rather than the adjusting tool, so … ?

The most informative sentence ever written was
I might add that in Putin's Russia you might add his life to the balance. When you simply cannot figure out why something works the way it does, start here.

I am not really looking for same level of expertise.  A level of rigor, maybe a few supporting opinions from credible sources?  I mean we get a lot of "here is wot I think" which is something but unless one is an expert then sourcing one is normally a good idea to back it up.
I am an expert and I still look at supporting sources because I am not an expert on everything. 

The level of discussion in this thread is extremely high, which is why I read it and am very thankful.  The knowledge, study and experience of several contributing posters is off the effin charts...which makes this such a valuable source of information.  However, it may also deter counter-arguments in that so few individuals have equal experience to voice counter opinions which then leads to...an echo chamber of sorts.
I could study and research a relevant topic for months, (outside of my own little business/supply chain domain), and guarantee you and a few others could argue my points better than I without any research whatsoever.  But, in my opinion, we still need those counter opinions/arguments--when presented in a logical and respectful manner-- even if they aren't at the same level of expertise as some others. 
Just my opinion. Peace.

The level of discussion in this thread is extremely high, which is why I read it and am very thankful.  The knowledge, study and experience of several contributing posters is off the effin charts...which makes this such a valuable source of information.  However, it may also deter counter-arguments in that so few individuals have equal experience to voice counter opinions which then leads to...an echo chamber of sorts.
I could study and research a relevant topic for months, (outside of my own little business/supply chain domain), and guarantee you and a few others could argue my points better than I without any research whatsoever.  But, in my opinion, we still need those counter opinions/arguments--when presented in a logical and respectful manner-- even if they aren't at the same level of expertise as some others. 
Just my opinion. Peace.

The level of discussion in this thread is extremely high, which is why I read it and am very thankful.  The knowledge, study and experience of several contributing posters is off the effin charts...which makes this such a valuable source of information.  However, it may also deter counter-arguments in that so few individuals have equal experience to voice counter opinions which then leads to...an echo chamber of sorts.
I could study and research a relevant topic for months, (outside of my own little business/supply chain domain), and guarantee you and a few others could argue my points better than I without any research whatsoever.  But, in my opinion, we still need those counter opinions/arguments--when presented in a logical and respectful manner-- even if they aren't at the same level of expertise as some others. 
Just my opinion. Peace.

The level of discussion in this thread is extremely high, which is why I read it and am very thankful.  The knowledge, study and experience of several contributing posters is off the effin charts...which makes this such a valuable source of information.  However, it may also deter counter-arguments in that so few individuals have equal experience to voice counter opinions which then leads to...an echo chamber of sorts.
I could study and research a relevant topic for months, (outside of my own little business/supply chain domain), and guarantee you and a few others could argue my points better than I without any research whatsoever.  But, in my opinion, we still need those counter opinions/arguments--when presented in a logical and respectful manner-- even if they aren't at the same level of expertise as some others. 
Just my opinion. Peace.

Sorry Steve, your analogy is more confused than helpful here.
Nobody has claimed the passage of time had to be net bad, or good, or that it had to be evenly bad (or good) for both sides.
Both sides are using that time, in their own way, not simply 'buying' (or spending) time.
Nice strawman you're ripping to bits there. Does it taste nice? 
Nobody at all claimed Russia is stronger today than it was on day 1. 
But UKR = stronger + RUS = weaker does not allow us to conclude "The Russian is finished." It's an empty proposition, implying rates of change without defining or relating terms.
Nor does the course of the first year dictate what happens in the second. That is the mother of all logical fallacies (and leadership self-owns all through history).
So you are wayyyyy premature in saying 'losing', unless you insist on defining it as 'achieve the original goals of Putin's SMO', or some other goal that the Kremlin does not now care much about.
These guys who have 'already lost' are still sitting on 20% of Ukraine and aren't going to 'Lose' themselves out of it on their own unless shoved, very hard.
I am not seeing a collapsed or failed army or nation state here, not yet. You are extrapolating a long expected and hoped-for collapse in the future, saying here are the reasons, and 'banking it' today. And smugly talking down to those who want to question that.
Here are the facts on the ground, today.
1. Russia still holds the south Kherson land bridge, which permanently menaces all of southern Ukraine (c.1/3 of Ukraine's population and economy). The UA has no credible option to reinvade across the Dnepr.
2. Russia is slowly retaking northern Luhansk (Kupyansk-Torske), which is a defensible zone of complex terrain. The reason it lost it last time was because the UA hit (brilliantly) with light mobile forces while its army was pulling out. Don't rely on that mistake being made again.
3. Russia is also dismantling the last fortress towns in the 2014 UA fortified line (Bakhmut, Adiivka). We can certainly ask, 'is getting Donetsk airport out of shell range worth that carpet of shattered flesh?', but to Putin that isn't Losing. Not yet. 
We can certainly ask 'how long can they keep this up?'  Longer than we thought, it seems. But simply sitting and assuming current trajectories and rates of change are set and unchangeable is... folly of a type all too common in history.
Strawmen again, with a thick coating of 'all or nothing' absolutes which also happen to be false.
And as you yourself agree, the most important thing the Russians have to do to help themselves is stop losing men, especially trained specialists, by the bushel each month. They haven't yet, but there's nothing that says they can't stop (see hypothesis above).
Improving RU fieldcraft is widely noted in Ukrainian field reports. You can denigrate these as unscientific all you like, but this is simply not the roadbound, vehicle tied, not enough rifles to pull security or patrol army it used to be. Its missions are also less ambitious today.  Is this 1940s+ army actually 'stronger' at defending fixed positions than it was a year ago? It definitely has more bodies now, and hasn't replaced them. And seems to be killing a worrying number of Ukrainians, with far fewer shells. What else might they shore up if they get a breathing space? Do we want to find out?
Skilled cadre and modern equipment and a host of other resources were squandered in 2022, and there's a massive price to that, impossible to replace in kind, and very possibly too great to overcome. You prefer to argue, fallaciously, that I deny that, just because I haven't joined you in declaring inevitable victory, why worry, lie back and think of England. Here's some more dead mobiks.
...But that's what we call 'sunk cost' in business. You can't change the past. You evaluate, move on and find workarounds and replacements.  Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But if the enemy leaves you time (and you quit slicing off your own digits), your chances can improve.
That was my main point, and it didn't need this kind of highhanded reply. You could really use a little less collegiate smug and a little more good faith in your debating style, Steve. We're not exactly morons here in your community.

This is an excuse which is given much too much traction in the West. Along with the alleged Russian trauma from World War 2, which is a variant of this argument.
In fact, in order to feel safe from conventional invasion by the countries of the West it is sufficient that Russia takes stock of the poor conventional military capability of its neighbours, as well as their size. Against whom Russia needs that strategic depth in Belarus? Against Lithuanians, Poles,  Danes maybe? Poland is in the middle of crazy military procurement drive, but 1) it is going to have effects, if any, years in the future; 2) it would not have happened at all unless Putin attacked the Ukraine. So it hardly could have been Putin's motive to start that attack in the first place.
Actually, Russia wants to control Ukraine and Belarus because it wants to have an imperium capable of bullying its neighbours politically, and it needs assets and bodies of those two countries to grow its imperial project. Putin is an autocrat who "owns" the country so for him, the physical enlargement of the state is like growing his own personal wealth. Also, this is a genuinely popular thing among his subjects, Russians like to feel stronger than their neighbours, but not to feel safe (the greatest threats to Russians are generally alcohol and other Russians), but to feel better than them and enjoy symbolically bullying them through various ritual acts of humiliation. Taking the disingenuous RUS narrative about security concerns at face value is just self-deception.

That is not the issue.  Of course out of control escalation of this conflict is a worry.  What a lot of people in the “must not start WW3” side of things tend to forget is that Russia is just as afraid of WW3 as we are.  Proof: despite severe setback and bleeding at historic levels, Russia has not turned to WMDs in this war.  Now we know that they do have red lines and we cannot forget that; however, we should also remember that we have red lines too.  
There are lines that are worth escalation and Russia (as well as ourselves, apparently) need to be reminded of that.  Controlled escalation to be sure, but if we’re are too terrified to act in a measured response to escalating Russian aggression we basically cede the strategic initiative.  This would give Russia de facto escalation dominance in this conflict.  FDR was right, the thing we need fear the most is our own fears.
A measured but clear escalation to this drone nonsense is required and while we are keeping this war in a box, we also cannot let our fears - nor forget that they are just as nervous as we are - hold back deliberate action.
”But why are we not imposing a no fly zone/boot on ground/striking Moscow”.  Couple reasons - all war is negotiation .  Escalation ladders have  rungs one can only use for the first time once, after that they become de-escalation options or norms of conflict.  So we want to keep strategic options open.  If we jump straight to no fly zones, we have a lot less escalation room before things get to a nuclear exchange threshold.  
Second one is trying to avoid inducing strategic panic on our opponent through miscommunication.  A no-fly zone over the Black Sea may seem reasonable to us but rationality is relative.  Russia may see this as a prelude to establishing air superiority for an invasion and panic.  Putin needs a centralized and functioning control system on his own escalation and panic is toxic to that.  So in this responses must be clearly communicated and demonstrated through signalling.
So, for example, if one is going to employ offensive cyber to shut down Russian military airspace control, unlike in a Grey Zone/Subversive context, this action would have to be more clearly a communication of action - all war is communication.  The primary mechanisms of that communication are cause and consequence.  Attribution would need to be clear and message needs to be received that buggery out over the Black Sea against US assets has consequences.
This speaks to the reality that the west needs to accept, this war is as much ours as it is Ukraines.  With China now communicating along with Iran it is becoming clear that this entire thing is becoming a global decision point in just how the global order will proceed.  We are not supporting Ukraine because Russia is bad (they are in this), or “the children!”.  We are doing it because this war is an attack on the global order that demands a response or we risk losing that order itself.  In many ways this war is already moving towards a global conflict as power poles invest in it as a proxy conflict - it is becoming an indirect WW3.  And while we must do what we can to avoid a direct WW3, we cannot let that fear drive us to losing the war we are already in.

Well so far, you:
- have applauded a Russian direct attack on a U.S. military assets in international waters.  “Perfect soft kill” was your exact term, which is just wrong on a lotta levels…not perfect, sloppy because we have freakin camera footage…not soft, hard as it was very likely by kinetic impact and not EW jamming etc.
- Argued that is was within some sort of justifiable ROEs because the US is supporting Ukraine while it fights for it’s life.  It is not justified, at least until this war expands outside Ukrainian borders - hell we are tip toeing around hitting targets inside Russia but apparently international waters and airspace are the Wild West now.
- Offered that we re-write international legal norms as they relate to international waters…reasoning and logic TBD.
- Linked the current incident to another over Turkey in 2015 (unless you believe the Russian position because they have a good track record of being truthful in these matters).  And somehow are trying to make the current situation, again, acceptable.
- Made a huge leap between WW3 and a couple banks collapsing in the US.
- And linked it all back to “elites” because we all know they run the world through a Star Chamber near the earths core…ok, I made up that last part but it really wasn’t that far off-narrative.
But I will accept you are not in the “nut-camp”, however, when you decide to join us in the “grown-up, I am over first year philosophy and political science” camp please let us know.
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown  This?  We are talking about this?  No, this is a Russian violation of Turkish airspace that prompted a lethal response (that was a hard kill to btw).
Ah, well you squarely have the Great US Satan in your brainpan today and look like are planning on a pretty wide scope logic journey while standing on the righteous hill of “it isn’t fair!”
Can we expect a sequel of how the US and NATO forced Russia into invading a neighbour?  Bioweapon black sights and sinister US oil interests?  How all those people at Bucha were crisis actors?  I mean if you are going to go all crazy in public, why do half measures.