Yet

A huge thanks for the great discussions over the past few days, enlightening on many subjects.  And a special thanks to ATH for stepping in over the past couple of weeks to add another angle to the point/counterpoints.  This forum is excellent.
 

Not rambling but I would encourage you to widen your aperture - you clearly have demonstrated the potential in these discussion but I fear you remain somewhat restricted by conventional boxes.
The aim here is not to create "and all drone force" or "all APS c-drone force." and have them play smash-smash until one side wins.  The aim here is to evolve our land warfare systems to best effect. Hcrof has already outlines some very good ideas on how to do this and none of them include "and all drone force".
So I for one would stop investing in heavy metal...period.  We can find way to repurpose the metal we have, and yes, that will include protections for it.  But heavy metal - and here I am talking armor, IFVs and AFVs will need to be re-rolled to a greater or lesser degree.  So what do I want?
- C4ISR - best in the world.  I want a fully illuminated battlefield in real time that can integrate all my shooters in a cloud-like concept.  I see targets early and can pull from that cloud just in a self-healing network of offensive systems.  From sub-surface, surface, air, space and cyber - I want See, Hear, Understand superiority.  With that I can beat just about anyone.
- Precision (see C4ISR).  I want a precision based force.  300 bullets means 300 kills.  I want that precision linked and able to swing on a dime to bring massed precision to any point on the battlefield.  I want to be able to melt an opponents operational system in quick time from front end to industry.
- Unmanned (see Precision and C4ISR) - I want humans doing what they do best - battlespace management.  I want fewer of them but they are the owners of the nodes, not mass.  Mass needs to be machine based because it is 1) sustainable as dead metal has much less effect on human will, 2) cheaper in the longer term (humans are very cheap in the short), 3) much less prone to errors and friction.  I want unmanned to be the front edge of battle. I want it armed with Precision and ISR.
- Fires.  Strike is not going anywhere.  If someone told me I have 5B dollars..."where do you want it?"  A good slice would be into over-the-horizon fires - guns, missiles and loitering.  I do not want an "unmanned force" - I want a Firepower Force.  See it, kill it, repeat.  I want to use fires as manouevre.  
- Infantry.  Not for mass but there is a reality that people will be needed forward. Likely paired with machines but the human brain is still the most powerful processor in the universe (that we know of) and war is still all about people.  I want light, fast and dispersed infantry.  Crawling into everything like sand up the bikini, and they can take the machines with them.
All of that means Denial at worst and crushing corrosive warfare at best.  I would take that up against any military on the planet right now.  I do not care if an opponent comes at me with f#cking dragons with wizards on them; I will be able to see and hit from so many different angles that there is no force protection in existence that will allow them to advance.  Wrap your tanks in bubble wrap, I will hit logistics back to the break rooms. Further that advancing would be capable of terrifying offensive effects.   
I want mass precision beats everything.
Now I am not going to get that, but I want investments to take us in that direction and not backwards.  Why?  Because there is a lot more evidence coming from this war, and the ones before it, that this is the direction where things are heading. More than any way we have fought in the past. As a student of military history, I can see the writing on the wall - we are looking at a shift, again. We will continue to negotiate with the future, everyone does, but we can at least be smarter about it. 

opportunism, 
Take the most out of it as you can as long as the rules of the game are like this. Ever noticed that when people play poker for real money (how Ukr values its troops) they play different than when its with beads (how RU seems to value its troops).

opportunism, 
Take the most out of it as you can as long as the rules of the game are like this. Ever noticed that when people play poker for real money (how Ukr values its troops) they play different than when its with beads (how RU seems to value its troops).

ehhh... no? 
Russia (in the reversed scenario USA/NATO) isnt lobbing anything.
Belarus (Ukrain) is lobbing Russian (NATO) missiles just over the border in Bialystok (Belgorod) to prevent the opening of a new piece of the front near Grodno (Kharkiv) in a 2-year ongoing war. 
... am i reversing something wrong? 
 
(and yes I picked Belarus, as a perfect example for the turnaround wasn't there. Ukr could be used but it would be clouding as people would start screaming 'uninmaginable!).

ehhh... no? 
Russia (in the reversed scenario USA/NATO) isnt lobbing anything.
Belarus (Ukrain) is lobbing Russian (NATO) missiles just over the border in Bialystok (Belgorod) to prevent the opening of a new piece of the front near Grodno (Kharkiv) in a 2-year ongoing war. 
... am i reversing something wrong? 
 
(and yes I picked Belarus, as a perfect example for the turnaround wasn't there. Ukr could be used but it would be clouding as people would start screaming 'uninmaginable!).

soooo. Nato invades Belarus 'cuz we like potatoes', and Putin allows Belarus 2 years later  that Belarus army may use Russian weapons to attack assembling army Nato army  in Bialtstok (PL) ready to invade Belarus.
=WW3? 

ehhh... no? 
Russia (in the reversed scenario USA/NATO) isnt lobbing anything.
Belarus (Ukrain) is lobbing Russian (NATO) missiles just over the border in Bialystok (Belgorod) to prevent the opening of a new piece of the front near Grodno (Kharkiv) in a 2-year ongoing war. 
... am i reversing something wrong? 
 
(and yes I picked Belarus, as a perfect example for the turnaround wasn't there. Ukr could be used but it would be clouding as people would start screaming 'uninmaginable!).

My main issue is that there is healthy and unhealthy self regulation.  We need to be able to confront obvious trolls or anyone pitching outright falsehoods, in either direction.  We have done that routinely and must continue to.
What we do not need are echo chamber police that reduce your noted spectrum from 1 to 10, to “only 8-10!  All other numbers are -12 and support genocide!”  At that point we really do become an insular echo chamber where original thought goes to die.
This sort of behaviour smacks of the contemporary cancel culture and gotcha politics we are plagued by in the modern age. I do think we are all on the same side but I should be able to push back on a Ukrainian poster who is basically crapping on the US, and express frustrations with a partner who at times appears to be misaligned with ourselves. Further I should be able to do so without someone throwing insults and down-explaining the larger situation when I think I have clearly demonstrated that I know more than they do.
I am going to go cool off now but if we become a Ukrainian fanboys club in here then I fear we will lose what has made this venture worthwhile - an objective attempt to understand.

Everyone knows GenX don't exist, there's only Boomers, Millennials and Zoomers. Stop this misinformation!!!!!!
...
I think Swedish "AWACS" going to Ukraine is pretty interesting.
If whoever provides Ukraine with ISR now pulled the support, they would be pretty screwed. Once this arrives, they have some safety margin for it. Makes me think Sweden is thinking forward in case there's changes in who the Commander in Chief in US is or something.

Come talk to me after you have been in a couple wars with weak partners who end up failing in the end after we spend blood and treasure trying to hold them up - then maybe you can call “boomer trantrum.”
I know exactly why we are bankrolling this thing and the reasons are similar to why we have attempted interventions around the world for over 30 years - and based on your response, that means I was likely doing this before you were born, trust me, I “get it” better then you do.
My point is that we have been burned by weak partners before and when I hear this continuing “The West sucks/the West is weak/the West is scared” repeatedly coming from citizens of a nation that we have spent over their annual national pre-war GDP on trying to save…well any grown up has to pause and ask themselves “just who are we supporting here?”  Is Ukraine South Korea or are they Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan?  I strongly suspect they are South Korea but the signals coming from some quarters - and there have been more than a few - leave room for some healthy caution.

From your own link:
“[The demonstration was organised by] a new political party known as PRO. … [The] group, whose name in English stands for Law, Respect, Expertise, has no seats in parliament.”
Forgive me if I don’t expect a Prague Putsch any time soon.
Every country has its extremists, with or without external provocation and support.  Spotting them in the wild doesn’t mean they represent a majority opinion.

Excuse me?

While I don’t wholly agree with the above being a likely scenario (for example I’m not convinced that any amount of “logical thinking” would lead a country to think leaving NATO will make Russia less likely to invade them), it is undeniably an unpleasant one.
Where I think your argument falls apart is in implying that we should risk actual nuclear war in order to avoid it.

I love how Czech president responded "let this be a warning what can deepening hatred and aggression in society lead to" which reads like "you did this to yourself, dude".

It's not really the drones that are killing the tank, it's the ISR.  Drones are (sometimes) the immediate part that blows it up, but the root cause is the ISR.
There are also ATGM crews on quads and motorcycles, artillery with PGMS, artillery that can precision-ish place AT Mines, standoff drones that can paint tanks for laser guided artillery,"smart" uncrewed roadside ATGMs, and eventually @The_Capt's roombas with AT mines, and gawd knows what else.  Probably palletized missiles full of air launched smart-ish EFPs  that you can push out of a transport plane 50 miles back and paraglide across the FEBA to catch them while they maneuver into place.  And their supply trucks, too.  
But the key is that you can't move anything the size of a bicycle without commercial systems seeing it within an hour or so. And some states can see if you moved a big-gulp cup, though without quite the same revisit rate.  Tanks are big and hot.  Even small tanks are big and hot.  Electric tanks are big and cold until you move them, but hiding even them from someone with spectral imaging capability isn't easy.  And the logistics tail for tanks will also be big and long and hot - you can't move things without leaving a heat trail.  So even if you make the tanks like Wonder Woman's invisible plane, the supply chain will lead you right to them.  Or the supply chain will get hit so that the tanks can't move.

My anecdotal experience with The Kids™ is actually quite different. Without any education in nukes/deterrence, they tend to assume the most hysterical posture when someone like Putin flexes his ICBMs. I get it. It takes some getting used to when someone keeps talking about putting a gun to your head but the understanding of these things is woefully inadequate. And by The Kids™, I should be clear that pretty much covers everyone under 40...to include a whole lot of journalists in this neck of the woods. 

Good interview.
General Hodges on Retaking Crimea, NATO in Ukraine and Russian Collapse
EDIT:
Some other news...
The U.S Army Just Unveiled The Newest Version Of Its Combat-Tested Bradley IFV
with 'Iron Fist' Active Protection System:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/the-u-s-army-just-unveiled-the-newest-version-of-its-combat-tested-bradley-ifv/ar-AA1o8T42?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=076c22a83e4c401ce1a03e613f3add05&ei=45

US leaving Nato is MEGFTFT, not MAGA 
(MEGFTFT = make europe great for the first time)

Real life is very different from what you read in social media. Those things you mentioned do exist, but they are few and far between. It is blown out of proportion by the media. Take it with a grain of salt and don't fall for the propaganda. Live in general changes very little and very slow.

Children are always innocent. Simple.
Not their fault where they are born.
I strongly suggest you pause your posts on this topic.. 
I have deep respect for you and understand your pov but IMO it's not something for this thread.
I will PM you tomorrow.
 

I read the doc and RUSI actually hits some pretty salient points.  The mainstream thinking is that unmanned systems as we are talking about here are an addition to conventional warfare.  An emerging capability to be added to our extant capability portfolios and expenditures. Unmanned systems are an undeniably part of the future warfare military algorithms and focus should be on how to combine them best within our current approaches to create advantages.
I think this does not go far enough.  I believe that unmanned autonomous systems will emerge as the core pillar of a future military operational system.  We will then build the remaining systems, some legacy others also new, around these new unmanned capabilities.  We will fund and equip the unmanned forces first, along with C4ISR and PGM strike.  We will then need to figure out from the money left what to resources with respect to heavier conventional manned systems.  This takes the entire approach to force development and generation and flips it. More plainly, tanks will survive if they can demonstrate that they can shape, support and/or exploit the main unmanned battle…not the other way around as RUSI and others suggest.
This era we are in reminds me of the introduction of machine guns. Militaries of the day immediately brigaded them like cannons and relegated them to a support-to-infantry role.  The reality is that within a few short years the role of infantry was to protect the machine guns while they exerted firepower effect, and then the infantry would exploit that effect by taking and holding ground…so they could move up the machine guns.

These recent videos of Russian armoured assaults are insane ! 🤯
I mean, I ( and almost everyone on this forum ) would be absolutely messing myself with worry if I even tried that in CM in a WW2 context. Are the Russian generals on drugs ?
Maybe it's just because I tend to be very logical, but I cannot wrap my head around this kind of behaviour after 2 (two !) years of seeing this sort of thing get smashed.

When the unified right wing National Corps slate only manages to get something like 2.5% of the total vote in Ukraine while rightest parties dominate Russia then this discussion gets very silly. 

And also “absolutely”.  We should track loses, terrain etc as exactly that, indicators.  In sums they can signal trends, which are extremely important for telling wind directions.
Where things get weird is when people take these trends as actually metrics of victory and/or defeat.  Adiivka was a long brutal tactical offensive that really has not yielded an operational consequence, at least not yet.  It is a data point within the war.  Not a fundamental sign any one side is “winning or losing”.  Ironically, those using Russian advances over the winter as an indicator that “The Hot Thread Has No Clothes” are using “heuristics”.  Which we have been all schooled upon as our own original “sin.”
The reality is that we need to see operational level decisions that change strategic options before we can say the tide is shifting.  If Russia could have translated Adiivka into an operational manoeuvre and was at the gates of Kharkiv right now, with a view to splitting Ukraine in half…well then we are definitely into “uh, ok something has really shifted here” territory.  Ukraines strategic options would be collapsing in this scenario, which to my eyes is a real metric.
Taking Adiivka or Bakhmut as signs of Russian winning, resolve or invincibility, only demonstrates a serious lack of understanding how war actually works.  And strangely, where were these people when Ukraine was making similar small limited tactical gains last summer?  Oh wait, they were here crowing about how “Ukraine is done!”
There is a clear double standard in some western political circles.  And this part really makes me angry.  Real people are suffering and dying in the largest conventional war we have seen in a long time.  And the first thing some people are doing is viewing it through the “I will do the opposite of what the other political party is doing because they cannot win.”  Not what is morally right or wrong.  What is best for their personal political calculus.  That is what really makes me react to these trolls.  They do not have the best interests of anyone at heart, but their own.  It is an extremely selfish way to approach something as brutal and unjust as this war.