kimbosbread

That is fantastic; I would consider this more than “no actions”. I just wish they had some more people to continue the action further northwest on the road to Kursk. It would be amazing if they could get better AAA coverage, but I assume any missiles they can bring with them are limited to 7km altitude and below. Presumably further long range drone strikes and F16s over the next 6-12 months will reduce the FAB threat to where these incursions become much harder to stop and Ukraine has a nice DMZ.

I was thinking more about locomotive hunting the other day with drones. Maybe it’s easier to just drop anti-tank mines with an accelerometer on them on the track? But you need to get the damn mine over there anyway.

I think there is also a spectrum between false flag and real attack: You know something specific is going to happen, and you let it happen as you can benefit Grooming potential actors (FBI specialty) Mobilization focused on Muslims is an interesting idea, but on the other hand that might backfire too… does Russia have the capability to put down a full-blown secession in Dagestan right now?

Moscow airport and metro bombings a decade or two ago weren’t as big, but still killed a lot of people (almost 40 each incident).

The goal of the propaganda is refine this down to just the emotion “Oh ****”. They do not want any more thinking than that. They don’t need everybody to go sign up; they can drag them off too. If everybody is scared and irrational, they cannot respond to the mobilization except for passively.

I think this bears repeating. RAND put out a great article a while on this; this style of propaganda is not limited just to within Russia’s borders https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html. A decent portion of the US right has basically gone full retard partially as a result of this kind of information onslaught. And lots of other people have been affected more generally where they break down trust. That’s the other thing; the timing is perfect, right after the election and “declaration” of war, and pre-mobilization… and the lack of nearby security forces is suspect. Just because it is crazy and irrational from our perspective doesn’t mean it isn’t useful for Putin. The null hypothesis of “jihadis did it” I do think makes more sense, but the alternative “putin did it” is not out of the question. And the worst part is, it doesn’t matter. If ISIS did it, it’s just as useful for Putin.

The above is why the drones need to be designed to kill as creatively and painfully as possible (and to record the killing on social media ofc). Designer death, as it were, lovingly customized for a single soldier.

I sincerely hope the latter; the way to end the war is render Russia incapable of conducting a war. EDIT: If the US was willing to give more weapons, especially those capable of taking out for example Russia’s bomber fleet, and more road-mobile patriots, maybe? But that’s not going to happen.

Dream biglier, dude. Nano (ofc self-replicating) and bio is way scarier.

Yeah, pretty much this: Radiating too much signal? Encryption of video? Crappy signal? Range? Battery Life? All roads lead to one solution, unless you really really really require a human in the loop- and even then, you might not need to send video back, but a text description of potential target, or a still image.

Yeah DJI encrypts the data, but FPV racing drones don’t (lag), and most hobby drones don’t because it’s more complicated. Specifically, it’s really easy to send a control signal (and encrypt it), but for video it’s more work, and sending analog video is really easy in terms of hardware and software. Pumping video over WiFi isn’t hugely hard, but it’s more work in terms of software, chips etc, and then your FPV goggles need a way to hook up to Wifi vs just receiving an analog signal etc.

When I was more interested in such things, I believe it was basically possible to sample wifi traffic for N minutes, push the data up to AWS and use various techniques to attempt to decrypt/recover keys there. So assuming you can sample enough data on the front, it might be doable. And then you are relying on encryption keys being rotated frequently or being generated new for every communication.

Porque no los dos? Yeah, it’s multiplier effect. The US is around 30% of freight on rail by ton-miles; I assume Russia is higher due to the yuge-ness and sparse-ness of the country, but all the last mile will still be truck.

I didn’t realize this wasn’t common knowledge. Commerical drones, especially FPV-type have open video channels on known frequency. Video is not encrypted at all.

Yeah that’s basically what needs to happen. Along with destroying every locomotive in Russia or some other means of taking out their railroad network. I don’t think Ukraine can win unless Russia is physically incapable of fighting anymore as long as Putin is in control. Yeah that’s the other side of the coin. China isn’t capable of backfilling Russia’s oil production for them. I guess Iran could send Russia oil/gas, but how is Russia going to pay for it if they aren’t selling oil? What happens in Russia if every refinery or major petroleum facility with 500km of Ukraine is damaged to the point it cannot function? I could definitely see China testing out new lightweight drone defense tech in Russia, but you still have the basic fact that Russia is a giant country with many targets. Refineries too well defended? Take out all the sewage treatment facilities in major cities.

What I want is mines with glide kits. Forget remote mining- imagine you want a minefield somewhere and you literally just specify the gps coordinates. Or maybe these soviet mines can be retrofitted as a kind of one wheel, so they can just roll their way over to wherever they need to be.

$666 per kg to LEO (assuming $100M launch cost, 150T payload) is around a quarter of Falcon 9’s cost. So right now, even if you expend the rocket, it’s a massive advance.

For everybody’s fun and entertainment, the third launch of SpaceX’s Starship just made it to orbit and will re-enter in a half hour or so. < $100kg to LEO, here we come. Obviously being able rapidly re-use a rocket that can put 150 tons into LEO will make it easy to rebuild satellite constellations in a war, but the logistics possibilities are really cool.

I really hope so, and I hope they mine the absolute hell out of the area too. Create a nice mine belt and give ukraine a few sqkm of russian DMZ.

Ooooh this big strategic strikes on the oil facilities are going to really hurt Russia badly. A whole spring of this and they won’t be exporting much oil or producing much gas for that matter, and they don’t make the parts for refineries (IIRC it’s all western), and it’s not like spares sit around anyways. Also, to everybody who was all wah wah long range drones don’t exist wah wah last 2 years, render the salad unto Caesar!

Lies, damn lies, statistics, and economic statistics. Reminds me of the old joke! Two economists are walking in the park. As they're walking, they come across a pile of dog ****. One economist says to the other, "If you eat that dog ****, I'll give you $50". The second economist thinks for a minute, then reaches down, picks up the ****, and eats it. The first economist gives him a $50 bill and they keep going on their walk. A few minutes later, they come across another pile of dog ****. This time, the second economist says to the first, "Hey, if you eat that, I'll give you $50." So, of course, the first economist picks up the ****, eats it, and gets $50. Walking a little while farther, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $50 to eat dog ****, then you gave me back the same $50 to eat dog ****. I can't help but feel like we both just ate dog **** for nothing." "That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $100

Amazing. They should have flown the pride + trans pride + black power first (in a rainbow of skin tones) flag I’ve seen knocking about town. Puting would literally die of confusion.

Abandoned ship on a channel being used as a Russian base is so 1960s French spy fiction.

Exactly! I as I asked pages ago, what happens if Russia no longer has the desire + capability to launch glide bombs due to airfleet attrition and risk of remainder being at risk? This is obviously why they are looking at GLSDBsky. Use SRBMs?

Technically, Russia will never exactly run out of mobiks.