Letter from Prague

If Ukrainian pilot in a fighter jet snuck 250 kilometers into Russian air defense and shot down AWACS then I don't know how he would fit into his plane with those enormous balls (or ovaries I guess).

But if it was ambush, why would he start firing flares? Is heat-seeker warning something planes normally have? edit: they do and it took two minutes on wikipedia to confirm that. I could have avoided this post.

I don't think anyone reasonable considered the F-16s magical weapons. They are replacements for MiGs and SUs - planes wear down, especially when used in combat conditions and Ukraine has gotten all the spare parts and replacements for their MiGs and SUs that they ever will - there are barely any more in the world and Russia will for sure not make more. The F-16s are reasonable and cost effective way to get Ukraine replacements, to make sure Ukraine even has an airforce because the current planes are probably falling apart as we speak. It would also allow Ukraine to use modern NATO weapons without crazy hacking like getting MiG-29 to launch HARM which is cool but probably lot of bull to handle and to keep it working. While it is very possible the F-16s will change the situation - because for example, the Russians using glide bombs seems to have lot of impact so Ukraine getting easy access to those as well could be expected to push the needle - I think it's disingenuous to claim there's hosts of people who claim they will definitely change everything. Where are those people?

My God, this is like tenth time someone killed a high ranking Russian and bunch of soldiers because they showed up in strike range and someone organized a parade. Why would you keep making the same stupid mistake again and again and again and again. It's stupidity like this that makes me hopeful that Ukraine will win.

The problem with this approach is while it seems to work really well, it is very expensive and it needs a lot of PGMs. There's a lot more JDAMs in the world than Storm Shadows and GMLRSs. This is where the West should come in, but I'm not sure it's happening. The attempts to make cheap to produce "mass market" PGMs like the GLSDB or various drones are step in the right direction I think. But if Ukraine had order of magnitude more of them, we might have been currently discussing rebuilding now that the war ended. Hilarious. If I ever get banned, please do it with as funny message.

That just puts us on the "Russia in freefall" path because I think any hopes of clean Russian coups died with Prig and Navalny. which I am ok with, but lots of people were saying its bad.

The problem is that the escalation management is not getting better. It _still_ looks like West is more concerned with not angering Russia too much, while Russia is openly calling this total war with West and Ukraine is getting weaker. Anyway. I wonder how Navalny's death impacts things. The idea of Putin going down in a coup and Navalny replacing him as West friendly Czar, who would likely be Putin but softer - maybe stopped the war in exchange for removed sanctions but definitely didn't surrender any land back, seems to go out of the window. It looks that letting Russia win or the dreaded "Russia in free fall" are really really the only two ways how this can end now.

If I were Taiwan, I would start building 4 factories for these naval drones this week. They are shockingly effective.

Oil refinery a day leads the russian economy astray. (stolen from reddit)

I was just thinking the reason would be that the Russian's aren't dumb enough to fly transport planes close enough to Ukraine. But now that I think about it, that can't possibly be the explanation

Someone is claiming it was a flight from Iran, so probably Iranian ammo or drones or something - I don't think they would be exactly taking POWs to Red Sea resorts or whatever.

Yeah, where is shadowy cabal in control of politics when you need one?

They always say that though.

As a taxpayer, I want at least 73.5 % of my money be used to fight Russia.

That is something I was thinking about as well. We talked about "the tank is dead" quite a bit, not not about whether IFVs are dead. On one hand, a lot of the arguments stays - they are visible on the battlefield and expensive. And I can't compare logistical chain of an IFV to a tank. On the other hand, we keep talking about how infantry is important and how infantry is vulnerable to artilery and FPVs and this could help. And it seems the smaller autocannons are better fit for current war since the main tank killers are really ATGMs and tank on tank fighting is rare. Maybe future IFVs would have feature to blend into the scenery when turned off or something, and serve as a mobile trench for people to hide, while being not more visible. Or some kind of IFV / SHORAD hybrid, like Gepard that can fit people in this drone heavy world. Those are probably stupid ideas.

Now "nobody is pledging to give more tanks and IFVs to Ukraine" - I think that is probably fine, since they don't work now anyway. What should everyone be pledging? PGMs? Arty ammo? Drones? Does Ukraine need to work on domestic ISR or can it rely on US/NATO keeping helping with that?

I don't mean anyone specifically. But looking at elections predictions (shaky as they are) still says a lot about the pro-Russianess of it all. This is telling: I am waiting for more predictions for elections in my country, I assume they will be no less horrible. We got like half a million Ukrainians more than we had before the war - which is a lot for 10 million country, though not that much compared to, say, Poland - but the populists and fascists are already using it heavily.

US will not support Ukraine at level of past two years – US State Department https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/01/5/7435942/

I think AfD (the pro-Russian openly-fascist not-so-openly-nazi party) is as much on track to win next German elections, as Trump is on track to win US elections, if not more. So the answer is probably yes.

I'm sure the West forbids it in some way, like many other things.

Cruise missile destroyers would be nice, but I think cruise missiles would be better.

I think there's more - hitting airports will impact wealthy Russians' ability to go vacation in Paris or Berlin (since EU nations are unwilling to do that themselves). And any oil and gas would be a good target, since that is what pays for the war. Causing logistic hiccups would help as well - older Russians remember 90's shortages as a symbol of failed government I'm sure.

Yeah about that https://www.newsweek.com/swiss-legend-toblerone-headed-production-slovakia-due-costs-1718713 Swiss Legend Toblerone Headed for Production in Slovakia Due to Costs

You're missing Slovakia on the list. Don't forget that Slovakia joined Hitler in WW2, just like Hungary, and currently elected a heavily corrupt mafia-style pro-Russian anti-EU government. Meanwhile Romania I wonder about - from where I'm standing they're trying to be rather Western and one of the stronger, effective and reliable NATO nations and are pretty heavily armed with modern NATO hardware (tho that seems to be more aimed at "if Serbia starts **** again" rather than Russia up until recently). And since they aren't "core Soviet territory" unlike Baltic states and Poland and Germany, I'm thinking the Russian Empire would try to setup some kind of "neutrality". Bulgaria would probably stay passive as they have been, but they are also heavily pro-Russian.

Russia is already conscripting Ukrainians on the occupied territories. Why would that be any different on any newly occupied territories? ... Also, all the NATO stuff is nice, as long as NATO holds. Treaties are cool, but Czechoslovakia had a lot of treaties at the beginning of 1938. Not so much by the end. We will have to see whether we would see repeat of that situation for the Baltic states, if Russia isn't stopped well enough.