Jammason

I'm guessing you would have thought your more recent "10 point summary" would have closed this line of conversation, but I thought I'd just add this: It's not so much the % of ground seized, but how it's connected. Putin established his land bridge to Crimea, thus drastically reducing the chance of Crimea ever being on the negotiating table, cementing this bit of 2014 aggression as a permanent win. If things freeze as they are now, even the destruction of his beloved Kerch bridge won't affect Russia's access to the unsinkable aircraft carrier (with nice beaches, too!) in the Black Sea. International recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and the land bridge that connects it would be a big win for Putin (or at least a silver lining he could sell as a big win internally). The four new oblasts + Crimea also form a mega-cauldron from which he can (and no doubt will) re-arm and attack from in ~8-10 years after any negotiated cease-fire.

Anduril makes anti-drone drones. They may already be in theater, but if they are, I'm guessing performance is being kept under wraps. See, e.g.: https://www.anduril.com/capability/counter-uas/ . As someone who has used industrial lasers for fabrication, I'll repeat my skepticism about the effectiveness of lasers against drones -- too easy to harden against them, both with materials (ceramics) and cheap sensors & algorithms ("I'm getting warm, time to spin and fly chaotically to my target, while informing my mesh of the location of the threat")

The call for a slowdown, if heeded, will only widen the gap between those who want to use these technologies responsibly and those who see them as tools for massive influence operations. Do you think (Prigozhin's!) IRA will ever stop extending and employing AI to further their agenda, which broadly entails stoking division in the West (particularly within the US), and more specifically & recently weakening support for Ukraine? Tim Snyder (The_Capt, and others) remind us that wars are usually won not by breaking the enemy's army, but by breaking or at least severely bending their political system to a point where the powers that be call "no mas". When viewed in this light, AI technologies will have more to do with the winning of future wars (perhaps even this one?) than drones or smart landmines or unblock-able positioning system technologies. And remember the authoritarian playbook: You don't necessarily need people to believe what your selling, you just need to flood the zone with enough that people no longer believe in the notion of truth. With truth out of the picture, it just becomes a matter of getting you to pick a side, and you'll defend it no matter the cognitive dissonance.

The question of how allocated funds will be spent effectively is a good one, and one that this group might actually have fun with. Here are my thought-starters wrt reconstruction funds. I’m purposely leaving out funds for military hardware (which are comparatively easy) and those earmarked for humanitarian & medical aid. I’m also missing farm rehabilitation, which is significant. Note I’ve put “mine clearing” under defense related civil engineering, but this effort may be a pre-condition for a lot of reconstruction projects, especially the previously mentioned farm rehabilitation. I’m breaking out reconstruction costs into three main areas, and am suggesting they are each individually funded by an oversight group, but are administrated separately, with staff that understands the breadth of domain-specific issues: 1) Building reconstruction, e.g.: - Houses - Apartments - Educational facilities - Hospitals - Shops/shopping centers - Administrative buildings 2) Transit/Infrastructure, e.g.: - Bridges - Roads - Power generation facilities - Oil depots - Railways - Airports 3) Civil Engineering Defense, e.g.: - Walls/fences/checkpoints - Border surveillance - Port/shoreline surveillance - Mine clearing Each of the independent bodies follows a similar process, a high-level summary of which looks like this: A. Assess damage B. Prioritize reconstruction, using RICE guidance where it fits (i.e. projects scored on Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort; essentially “bang for buck”) C. Identify areas of overlap where cost savings allow for (slightly) lower priority projects to be done alongside higher priority projects, re-sort list D. Ballpark cost estimates for highest priority projects E. Report cost estimates to oversight group. They allocate a single tranche of $X billion to cover Y projects F. Funds go into escrow account G. Competitive bidding process begins. Contractor can see real money is there, this gives them confidence to bid and allocate resources. H. Bids chosen; minimally required down-payments are released. I. Funds are released from escrow every X weeks and/or as project milestones are achieved Repeat process for as many tranches as budget allows. While many of you will no doubt point out the naïveté of my thinking, please point out how the above is worse than pallets of cash.

I don't think lasers will ever be the right solution to the drone problem; too easy to harden a drone against them. A simple aluminum nitride or similar ceramic skin & propellers (even super powerful industrial lasers have a hard time with certain ceramics, and that's with a stationary target from a range of less than 1cm) plus sensors and an on-board algorithm that says "if things are getting hot, rotate and randomly dart around". Plus, a laser powerful enough to do damage from a distance is going to be huge, expensive, and difficult to produce and maintain, and thus a high value, difficult-to-replace target that will be prioritized by the enemy. Effectiveness will also vary with weather (temperature & atmospherics like fog, smoke, rain, and snow). Nope, I think the answer is cheap kinetics fired by systems like Gephard or C-RAM. Barring those (also rare and expensive) systems, you could equip front-line forces with hundreds of anti-drone drones, which are already a thing that companies like Anduril are making as part of a more complete counter UAS system: https://www.anduril.com/hardware/anvil/

On the information wars front, I thought it was interesting to see the inner workings of a Russian bot farm, allegedly taken down by the SBU in Kyiv:

Why not hand off the FPV to AI and go full slaughterbot. What could possibly go wrong? Yes, slightly off-topic, but this war will be remembered for putting drones "on the map". I don't see (a version of) this future *not* happening, sadly

What would they nuke, Tom Clancy version: False flag suitcase bomb in Sevastopol. “The evil Nazis have destroyed one of our cities, and now we are justified in destroying a Ukrainian city of our choosing.” … and they take out Kyiv. Why Sevastopol? The false flag offering would have to be significant to justify the response, and it has the benefit of being a justifiable (sellable) target given its role in Crimea’s complicated history. It’s also NOT in the mainland, so the domestic audience can get very angry at Ukraine without feeling as though the Kremlin failed to protect them. This is the “last ditch” of a Kremlin sure they were going to lose Crimea. But again, this is only in the Tom Clancy world.

[+ various Kerch comments] Bridges are notoriously difficult to take down, especially those of the Kerch size/construction (Thanh Hóa Bridge, anyone?). Here's an interesting video showing the difficulties involved, as well as at least one reason to not bring down the Kerch (give your enemy a path to retreat).

My numbers come from the video starting at the 14:10 mark: “the 20-24% [of the land occupied by Russia] is 80% of the value of the Ukrainian side. And if the Russians manage to occupy Odessa, too, this number jumps to 90%”. Clearly, I mis-interpreted the number. I’m not sure even now what he means, but perhaps it is: the Russians currently occupy land that is 80% of the [GDP] value of land occupied by Ukraine, which would imply he believes it is 80/(100+80) = 44.4% of GDP. So, I definitely got this wrong. Mea culpa. However, this land is still oil & wheat farm rich, so the broader point that it is a jewel to be captured by Russia or denied Ukraine (via destruction) still stands, I would think.

I'm here to be educated, so please elaborate. Note most of this is opinion, so it feels odd to be accused of lying. I'm also not sure "everything is wrong". To summarize: Russia's losses have been great They (Russia) are slowly taking/destroying the Donbas Sanctions can be skirted Trump presidency isn't out of the question and would be a good thing for Russia NATO is unlikely to let UKR in while they are in an active war with Russia Russia appears to be in this for the long haul If that's *all* wrong, please, do tell.

Sobering evidence that Russia does not actually "suck at war". Yes, their losses have been great (they don't seem to care), but they are replenishing BTGs faster than UKR (see comparison in the clip). They're slowly taking/destroying the Donbas, which seems to represent the lion's share of Ukrainian GDP (80-90%). This will either become an RU prize or will be denied to Ukraine via destruction. Neither outcome bodes well for the blue and yellow economy. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but I still see the outcome as a toss-up. Sanctions can be skirted, notably with the help of the two most populous countries in the world that benefit from cheap Russian hydrocarbons. Another Trump presidency is also not out of the question, which would likely result in significant sanction reductions--or worse. As I noted earlier, the way to ensure Ukraine never joins NATO is for Russia to simply keep attacking them (NATO is unlikely to sign up for an automatic Article 5 trigger). This might just be a couple of missiles per week, an amount easily within the in-country production capabilities of the 6-12 different RU companies that make them; stockpile depletion need not factor in. I see Russia's commitment here lasting at least as long as their efforts in Afghanistan, more probably as long as that of the US there. I doubt a changing of the guard at the Kremlin will change their resolve any more than the replacement of Boris Johnson will change that of the UK. This is one of those situations where I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

^This. And once Ukraine and allies reject the offer, RU is going to dig in like a tick. Consider: Ukraine will not be accepted as a member of NATO (and probably not EU), while there are active Russian military strikes against it. To keep Ukraine out of NATO, then, all Russia has to do is be in a perpetual state of military aggression against it. Expect Russia to gear up for an exceptionally long war. Screwing with Ukraine is about to become a national pastime (if not official policy). The will of Ukraine and the West to endure economic and physical pain and suffering is going to be tested. You are right to think Russia will be tested too, but their infrastructure is only subject to sanctions (and we're seeing, while they have bite, there are holes and workarounds --India, China, "dual use", etc-- that dull the teeth considerably), not cruise missiles.

Note that I'm not making that analogy, I'm saying it can be used (if imperfectly) by Russia to sway minds on the fence. And while I do think it's an imperfect analogy, the Russian devil's advocate would counter your point that "it was the English colonists who rebelled" by saying it is the LPR/DPR who rebelled, and their brave fighting from 2014-2022 gave us proof they could win, which is why we came in now. I'm not so sure all will agree the analogy's failure is as complete as you think. But how Russia rationalizes their actions to the world isn't the main point I was trying to make anyway. It is instead the move to support forces fighting for their independence is militarily smarter, more achievable given RU assets and liabilities, and is a much better "look" for Russia. The thread might benefit from separating this phase of the war from the initial stupidity and ineptitude.

So the hot war of independence for DPR & LPR that started in 2014 (and gained momentum with civilian protests) is all Russian puppeteering and the puppets actually don't want independence at all? I'm curious: If a honest referendum (impossible, I know, but humor me) was held in DPR and LPR today, what is your percentage estimate of voters who would favor rejoining Ukraine over independence?