kimbosbread

Assuming it’s true, it’s a pity about GLSDB. That said, I think the MIC would be well served by turning the system into a smart cluster munition that can basically give a bunch of smaller drones an extra 150km range. So what if it gets jammed a bit? Optically guided sub-drones/munitions (don’t want to mis-something these) would obviate all that. Many pages ago, I feel like we discussed paragliders as munitions. If your GLSDB-but-not-really drops a 100kg worth of paraglider drones from say 1kft at night, how do you even shoot all those down? Imagine if it’s 100x 1kg bomblets with parachutes and a battery and propellor and some servos for steering the chute, you could mess up a lot of stuff. Or I guess they could have flip out wings and whatnot, and that might be more reliable than a chute.

This totally discounts the leadup before the war of Putin and his map, Putin berating his spy chief, US straight up warning Russia we knew what the plan was, 2014, etc. The only conspiracy that made sense to me at all was the Prigogine-Putin love affair fan fiction.

I’m thinking along the same lines. I think they’d get torn apart by small unit actions all over the place, be unable to refuel their vehicles, and generally things would turn into a giant mess. I assume even Russian military leadership knows this, but they’ve done lots of dumb stuff before, so who knows.

Exhausted soldiers, not enough of them, and not enough heavy weaponry. Meanwhile, Russia has gone all in. That said, I too have my doubts whether Russia can sustain multiple advances for several months and not just end up in the same situation as earlier in the war. They have much worse equipment (other than drones), worse soldiers (but many more of them), less good communications etc. And I have to wonder about their logistics for supporting an offense.

Please, Putin straight up did his previous land grab in 2014 under the current guy’s old boss (both of whom I think are decent people and have done decent jobs). I think Trump absolutely gave people pause just due to sheer uncertainty and capriciousness of his presidency. And then, just as Trump leaves office, Spring 2020 rolls around with a giant kick to everybody’s collective nutsack. And then maybe Putin, sensing his own mortality, decides to roll the dice again, since the US just backed out Afghanistan, and the guys who let 2014 happen are back in town. And it’s not just the US. Look at France, where the traditional political parties collapsed over the last decade. Or England.

I think defense is less risky, but you bring up a good point that even small but important offensive successive can help. A Ukrainian offensive will get bogged down at the same defensive line as before, presumably, and then just get hammered with glide bombs unless there is a good story on stopping those. Seems to me like Krynki is the best bet as it’s at the longest part of the Russian logistics tail. Personally, I would fortify the other areas and goad the Russians into attacking if they get shy, and focus all offensive effort on the bridgehead.

That is my impression from afar as well. I think digging in and preserving manpower and destroying Russia’s oil assets and war machine is the best strategy. If Ukraine cannot muster enough manpower to hold the line, assuming the west provides sufficient weaponry, then obviously it’s a moot point. The real question is can Russia continue like this for more than a year, especially if all refineries and oil depots and substations within 500km of Ukraine are destroyed.

When you say use drones offensively, what are you thinking? Small groups of infantry moving forward, and deploying the drones like they would, say, a mortar, and attacking positions with them as part of a combined infrantry-drone assault (along a larger front)?

This does seem like a good reason, unless Russia is playing some form of 5D chess that I cannot comprehend. Why not all of the above? There isn’t exactly a giant missile shortage though, just a shortage of missiles we feel like giving to Ukraine. That said, I do agree that given a finite (but large) supply of missiles, there are better targets until Ukraine is actually in a position to cut the land bridge. Like refineries, oil depots, ports, power plants, factories, locomotives, etc.

It would also force movement on the railroad, and the landing ships, and thus open those up to strikes.

If we get access to the new KGB archives, it will be very interesting to see which politicians and parties were directly supported. I think we can safely guess some of them, but I bet there would be some interesting surprises.

I don’t get it either, unless the idea is to get the Russians to turn around and stop the war, which I understand but is obviously pretty stupid. Can someone who spends more time around modern governments shed light on this?

To be fair, Trump also definitely has some dementia going on. RFK though, well, I see his campaign (and his likely role as a spoiler) as definitive proof that we’ve entered an alternate timeline that is far more entertaining and ridiculous than the regular one. But we weren’t going to go to Mars in the regular one, so it’s win win all around I think.

Flamethrower dogs are cool, but I think the minaturization of flying drones is undervalued in terms of a terror weapon the battlefield. I wonder if we could go quite a bit smaller, maybe not mosquito sized but certainly a quarter or less the size of one of the DJI minis, and put a very small warhead on it, maybe thermite, maybe connected rod. I’m thinking 5-10g HE (plus some aluminum powder) and a coil of magnesium wire around it, and do machine vision based crotch dection. You could call it “The Eunuch Maker”. EDIT: Or if small enough, land on a soldier or vehicle and deposit a radio beacon.

If I’m Putin, I want to grab as much territory as possible, at whatever the short-term cost. Putin knows tanks + apcs likely won’t be of much use in defense, and is betting that mobiks and mines and trenches and drones will maintain the defensive, just like last year. The calculation he is making is that however costly it is to obtain this territory, it will be costlier for Ukraine to take it back. In addition, it is better to get this territory before US supplies arrive, making offense much costlier. Also, in order to reverse-Maidan, it needs to happen April-May-ish. With these conditions, he hopes to break Ukraine and the West’s will, and thus force negotiation or withdrawal of support. The way his calculus fails (IOM) is as follows: Ukraine can maintain it’s attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure, crushing the Russia economy and logistics and thus the ability to attack Ukraine is able to mass sufficient drones to deny defense on a sufficiently large front (say 40km wide) that it is able to not only clear lanes through minefields, via drones or otherwise, but also clear trenches with minimal boots-in-trench.