How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[poesel]

1 hour ago, alison said:

 I get the sense they are both pandering to voters who do not care even a tiny little bit about what is happening around the rest of the world or America's unique role in maintaining the rules-based international order.

It's not that they don't care - they don't know. And this is not(!) because US citizens are stupider than other humans. No - stupidity is very equally parceled out to everyone.

The problem is that it is quite difficult in the USA to access good information (news) about what's going on in the world.
News channels in the US depend on ad revenue (=viewers) to sustain themselves. But most of the news is pretty boring. So channels need to hype everything up and make it as confrontative as possible to attract viewers.

The end result is, that you know what a person will vote by knowing which news stations he watches. And the information you get will always be very biased.

I was there recently and failed to find a good and free news channel. There may be better ones behind a subscription, but I didn't have one.
As a side note, I got my kicks out of watching OAN. Pure comedy gold. Unfortunately, they don't know it...

When you travel, you always learn something from your home country. During this trip, I learned that easy access to good news is not a given.

[alison]

17 minutes ago, poesel said:

It's not that they don't care - they don't know. And this is not(!) because US citizens are stupider than other humans. No - stupidity is very equally parceled out to everyone.

The problem is that it is quite difficult in the USA to access good information (news) about what's going on in the world.
News channels in the US depend on ad revenue (=viewers) to sustain themselves. But most of the news is pretty boring. So channels need to hype everything up and make it as confrontative as possible to attract viewers.

The end result is, that you know what a person will vote by knowing which news stations he watches. And the information you get will always be very biased.

I was there recently and failed to find a good and free news channel. There may be better ones behind a subscription, but I didn't have one.
As a side note, I got my kicks out of watching OAN. Pure comedy gold. Unfortunately, they don't know it...

When you travel, you always learn something from your home country. During this trip, I learned that easy access to good news is not a given.

Completely agree. I highly recommend watching PBS News Hour, if you are interested in American politics and don't want to put up with the sensationalistic reporting that pretty much all the other American "news" outlets tend to do. You can watch for free online: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ I occasionally drop in on that one if there is something notable that happened in America the day before, but otherwise I stick with international newspapers. Television news in general isn't great.

If you're a DC nerd, during the early years of GWoT and Iraq War I used to listen to WTOP and Federal News Radio, plus CSPAN for the full sausage-making experience. I don't think most Americans follow or care about that inside the Beltway stuff, but it does give you a much better idea about how their government works on day-to-day basis than the latest social media outrage.

Actually, I think it's social media that's the big differentiator nowadays - and this isn't only limited to the US. The people I know who primarily consume their news through social media have a very different perspective on what is happening in the world, and tend to be very emotionally invested in whatever is currently going viral, even if it doesn't affect them personally - or indeed many people in total - at all.

I feel like social media tends to make it easier to distort the impact of certain events. It can give people the false impression that they are getting to see the real truth of things, unfiltered by the journalistic elite, bla bla bla, but actually what they're seeing is just America's Funniest Most Controversial Home Videos, followed by ground-level hot takes from amateur commentators who imagine that what's happening in one person's backyard must automatically also be happening in every backyard in the country. The sky is falling!

Previously we could identify and discredit purveyors of yellow journalism who were the middle-men/agitators, but now that layer is gone we're facing broad communities of people who essentially rely on gossip for their understanding of the world. It makes me worried, but perhaps it was ever thus?

We've talked about it on this thread before in the context of trying to understand the war just by listening to what the PBI are saying on socials - real news, direct from the trenches! What I gather from people with better military analyst chops than me is that while it is a useful input to have that level of reporting, to truly get a good insight into the war you also need to consider higher level strategic decisions and macro topics around the economy, technological advancement and international affairs. It's a tall order to expect generalized media outlets to do this, so there is always going to be some degree of simplification required... But for me personally, I would rather depend on outlets that let the topics breathe for a bit before reporting, and make sure that when they do report they have tried to gather enough context to simplify the topic in a useful way, than to drink from the firehose myself and prematurely imagine myself an expert on something I probably am not, and maybe nobody is yet because it just happened 5 minutes ago. It's perhaps a less immediately rewarding way to look at the world, though, because everything ends up as a depressing shade of gray with the end conclusion being "it's complicated" rather than just having a simple good guy/bad guy story.

Although, to be honest, for good guy/bad guy stories, I prefer fiction. [Insert your favorite LLF movie meme here.]

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

We did twice. Once in 1775 and again in 1812. We won both times. It wasn’t easy, and we probably would have lost the first one if we hadn’t gotten help from a European country that simply wanted to “maintain the balance of power” in Europe, so I’d say it’s somewhat comparable to Ukraine (the reason not withstanding).

Hold the phone now. 1775 is a very good analogy. The US was de facto the proxy for France in a European power struggle. They fought  much larger opponent, however, the opponents major hard power was maritime, not land. Regardless, the US prevailed in a long gruelling war of secession.

In 1812, the US tried to exploit the UK, who was fully engaged a European war. The US was the aggressor in that war in that they invaded Canada under some pretty thin justification. The US undertook several incredibly poor campaigns, losing dramatically at Crysler’s Farm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crysler's_Farm#:~:text=The Battle of Crysler's Farm,Crysler is the proper spelling).

And never recovering from the debacle. The UK went back on the offensive and burned DC and the White House. By the time the only US victory in that war happened - New Orleans, the war was actually over but the memo hadn’t landed yet. So 1812 was less of a “victory” than what Russia has achieved in this war. In this war it would be akin to Ukraine and the West driving Russia out of Ukraine entirely and the taking Moscow. But after a mauling at St Petersburg deciding the whole damn mess simply is no longer worth it. I am sure the Russians would claim it as a great victory too.

Edited 13 hours ago by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Almost certainly false. For one thing Harris was not a D.A. in 2017, she was Attorney General of California. As for the quote:

Fact Check: Kamala Harris quote about disregarding constitution is fake

 

The quote, opens new tab, purportedly made by Harris on Jan. 21, 2021, says: “These Trumpers think we care about the constitution. We have the power now, it's time to end this They really don't get. We will block them in the courts, we will use federal law enforcement and the military. After Joe inflicts the death blow, I'll take the reigns.They will beg me for a loaf of bread.”

Dear gawd this is a hilarious quote - I mean who wrote this? Josef Stalin? “Death blow”? “Loaf of bread?” People actually believed this was real?! Seriously this sounds like a quote from freakin Conan.

Edited 13 hours ago by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

It's not that they don't care - they don't know. And this is not(!) because US citizens are stupider than other humans. No - stupidity is very equally parceled out to everyone.

The problem is that it is quite difficult in the USA to access good information (news) about what's going on in the world.
News channels in the US depend on ad revenue (=viewers) to sustain themselves. But most of the news is pretty boring. So channels need to hype everything up and make it as confrontative as possible to attract viewers.

The end result is, that you know what a person will vote by knowing which news stations he watches. And the information you get will always be very biased.

I was there recently and failed to find a good and free news channel. There may be better ones behind a subscription, but I didn't have one.
As a side note, I got my kicks out of watching OAN. Pure comedy gold. Unfortunately, they don't know it...

When you travel, you always learn something from your home country. During this trip, I learned that easy access to good news is not a given.

I have a working theory on this. The problem is too much information. Yep, you read that correctly. Human beings are built with a limited attention span and ability to absorb new information. At the same time we are also built for pattern recognition. So when presented an ocean of information - good, bad and ugly - we get overwhelmed.

As a result we run back to…wait for it…micro social structures where we feel safe and can establish trust. We used to have four news channels. Everyone picked one and stuck with it. New anchors became our trusted sources. We talked about it at work and gravitated towards like minded people. 

Enter the internet. A mass of information at a keystroke. And it has only gotten larger. A human being can go on the internet and find any pattern they want/fear. You can build a theory that Bigfoot shot JFK (seriously, here is a start..go for it)

https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-bigfoot-and

So we did what we always did, micro-social-ed up. Problem is that micro-socials relationship to physical distance pretty much fell apart. We are doing it right now. People from all over the world can congregate and rely on each other to make sense of the world.  Problem is that some of these of these groups become completely disconnected to reality:

https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php

But this is once again a symptom of a Mark 2 primate brain being given access to nearly unlimited information. Further it is in how we translate information into knowledge. The key component is trust. We need to trust information before we will hard wire it into knowledge. Trust is a social metric. 

So I would argue the issue is not that there is too little free news. It is that there is way too much.

[Kraft]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

But it seems to have been triggered VERY close and perhaps not even successfully

I think so too, despite the post-process zoom in, the warhead appears to be already well above the tank before it cuts, I dont think APS works that close but that is a guess.

--------------

Alexa play November Rain

Edited 12 hours ago by Kraft

[ArmouredTopHat]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Thanks for that, but I have to agree with comments in that post... it's not clear the APS made a successful interception.  At best the video shows the APS was successfully triggered, which definitely is a good thing. But it seems to have been triggered VERY close and perhaps not even successfully.  Not sure the last few frames helps clarify as there is a big explosion, but we can't see more than that.

Steve

I had seen it and had been tempted to comment on it before, but its not exactly clear what happened. I personally think it intercepted the munition based on lack of followup footage showing the vehicle disabled / hit. The commander of the tank seemingly gets a heads-up as well which gave him time to duck, combined with the two modules switching onto target, I believe the munition was intercepted. (Especially given the feed cuts out well before impact)

Crazy footage all the same. 

Edited 11 hours ago by ArmouredTopHat

[Butschi]

3 hours ago, alison said:

Completely agree. I highly recommend watching PBS News Hour, if you are interested in American politics and don't want to put up with the sensationalistic reporting that pretty much all the other American "news" outlets tend to do. You can watch for free online: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ I occasionally drop in on that one if there is something notable that happened in America the day before, but otherwise I stick with international newspapers. Television news in general isn't great.

If you're a DC nerd, during the early years of GWoT and Iraq War I used to listen to WTOP and Federal News Radio, plus CSPAN for the full sausage-making experience. I don't think most Americans follow or care about that inside the Beltway stuff, but it does give you a much better idea about how their government works on day-to-day basis than the latest social media outrage.

Actually, I think it's social media that's the big differentiator nowadays - and this isn't only limited to the US. The people I know who primarily consume their news through social media have a very different perspective on what is happening in the world, and tend to be very emotionally invested in whatever is currently going viral, even if it doesn't affect them personally - or indeed many people in total - at all.

I feel like social media tends to make it easier to distort the impact of certain events. It can give people the false impression that they are getting to see the real truth of things, unfiltered by the journalistic elite, bla bla bla, but actually what they're seeing is just America's Funniest Most Controversial Home Videos, followed by ground-level hot takes from amateur commentators who imagine that what's happening in one person's backyard must automatically also be happening in every backyard in the country. The sky is falling!

Previously we could identify and discredit purveyors of yellow journalism who were the middle-men/agitators, but now that layer is gone we're facing broad communities of people who essentially rely on gossip for their understanding of the world. It makes me worried, but perhaps it was ever thus?

We've talked about it on this thread before in the context of trying to understand the war just by listening to what the PBI are saying on socials - real news, direct from the trenches! What I gather from people with better military analyst chops than me is that while it is a useful input to have that level of reporting, to truly get a good insight into the war you also need to consider higher level strategic decisions and macro topics around the economy, technological advancement and international affairs. It's a tall order to expect generalized media outlets to do this, so there is always going to be some degree of simplification required... But for me personally, I would rather depend on outlets that let the topics breathe for a bit before reporting, and make sure that when they do report they have tried to gather enough context to simplify the topic in a useful way, than to drink from the firehose myself and prematurely imagine myself an expert on something I probably am not, and maybe nobody is yet because it just happened 5 minutes ago. It's perhaps a less immediately rewarding way to look at the world, though, because everything ends up as a depressing shade of gray with the end conclusion being "it's complicated" rather than just having a simple good guy/bad guy story.

Although, to be honest, for good guy/bad guy stories, I prefer fiction. [Insert your favorite LLF movie meme here.]

I don't think you can explain the phenomenon with only one cause, although social media are certainly a huge amplifier of nothing else.

Just a few thoughts that come to mind in no specific order:

* Someone mentioned recently in a German article that (quality) media have to stop treating every position as equally valid. That's a hard thing to do because a hallmark of quality journalism has always been to hear both sides in an argument and report that in a neutral way. During the last two decades or so populists, climate "sceptics", etc. have learned to exploit this. One side uses actual facts, the other side completely makes things up but both are reported as two valid statements about a topic. The reader/listener makes of this that at best this is a topic that's still very much under discussion without established facts.

* Strongly related: Erosion of trust in experts. With the effect from above, recipients see that expert A says X, "expert" B says Y, both contradict each other, so you either believe noone or the one who's position you like better. My favorite example was during my time at CERN prior to switching on the LHC. A not entirely invalid concern was the LHC would produce black holes that eventually would gobble up the earth. There were actual particle physicists who said and could argue with facts that the machine is safe. And then media jazzed up one guy who was a professor (which is enough to know everything about everything, of course). Not in physics but medicine or so and was self declared chaos theorist. He told everyone we would destroy the world.

* It's all about clicks. This is true for social media but isn't exclusive to it. The root cause is that with the upcoming of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s we have learned that everything has to be free, actually charging money is greedy and evil. Free means ads, of course, and those are tracked and traded much faster and more precise than it was possible with paper or TV ads. So, an article is measured in the number of clicks it generates - and, as we've leaned from social media, the more an article emotionalizes and polarizes the more clicks it generates.

* Again related: Of course even quality newspapers had sensationalistic headlines. But that was more or less the title page. Plus newspapers relied a lot on long term subscription models which dampened the need for sensations and enforced building up trust over a longer time period.

* Quality journalism has actually declined over the years. That is due to a mixture of ads vs subscription (less stable money) and the need to report about everything in detail 5 mins after it happened. Of course people derive from that, that they can just as well get their news from telegram.

* There has been a lot of campaigning against "mainstream" media over the years (happily assisted by politicians on all sides when it fit their narrative) that increasingly comes to fruition.

* AI deep fakes erode trust even further.

* This point may be more exclusive to Germany: Prime time TV news are increasingly... "boulevardized"(?): E.g. when watching the daily news you should get a general understanding about what is going on in Ukraine (not in detail but at least the larger developments). What we got was: "Russia has further increased its attacks in Ukraine" (over months), interviews with random civilians in Kiyv and phrases like "civilians suffers most in this war".

* EDIT: As @The_Capt just wrote: most of this relates indeed to trust.

I do hope we are just seeing a phase of transition from classical media to, well, I don't really know.

Edited 11 hours ago by Butschi

[Billy Ringo]

The Cat From Hue is a great read about the media/journalism and how reporting and politicizing a story changed during the Vietnam war.

[akd]

Moscow region?

 

[Lethaface]

4 hours ago, alison said:

Completely agree. I highly recommend watching PBS News Hour, if you are interested in American politics and don't want to put up with the sensationalistic reporting that pretty much all the other American "news" outlets tend to do. You can watch for free online: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ I occasionally drop in on that one if there is something notable that happened in America the day before, but otherwise I stick with international newspapers. Television news in general isn't great.

If you're a DC nerd, during the early years of GWoT and Iraq War I used to listen to WTOP and Federal News Radio, plus CSPAN for the full sausage-making experience. I don't think most Americans follow or care about that inside the Beltway stuff, but it does give you a much better idea about how their government works on day-to-day basis than the latest social media outrage.

Actually, I think it's social media that's the big differentiator nowadays - and this isn't only limited to the US. The people I know who primarily consume their news through social media have a very different perspective on what is happening in the world, and tend to be very emotionally invested in whatever is currently going viral, even if it doesn't affect them personally - or indeed many people in total - at all.

I feel like social media tends to make it easier to distort the impact of certain events. It can give people the false impression that they are getting to see the real truth of things, unfiltered by the journalistic elite, bla bla bla, but actually what they're seeing is just America's Funniest Most Controversial Home Videos, followed by ground-level hot takes from amateur commentators who imagine that what's happening in one person's backyard must automatically also be happening in every backyard in the country. The sky is falling!

Previously we could identify and discredit purveyors of yellow journalism who were the middle-men/agitators, but now that layer is gone we're facing broad communities of people who essentially rely on gossip for their understanding of the world. It makes me worried, but perhaps it was ever thus?

We've talked about it on this thread before in the context of trying to understand the war just by listening to what the PBI are saying on socials - real news, direct from the trenches! What I gather from people with better military analyst chops than me is that while it is a useful input to have that level of reporting, to truly get a good insight into the war you also need to consider higher level strategic decisions and macro topics around the economy, technological advancement and international affairs. It's a tall order to expect generalized media outlets to do this, so there is always going to be some degree of simplification required... But for me personally, I would rather depend on outlets that let the topics breathe for a bit before reporting, and make sure that when they do report they have tried to gather enough context to simplify the topic in a useful way, than to drink from the firehose myself and prematurely imagine myself an expert on something I probably am not, and maybe nobody is yet because it just happened 5 minutes ago. It's perhaps a less immediately rewarding way to look at the world, though, because everything ends up as a depressing shade of gray with the end conclusion being "it's complicated" rather than just having a simple good guy/bad guy story.

Although, to be honest, for good guy/bad guy stories, I prefer fiction. [Insert your favorite LLF movie meme here.]

Very well worded, I see the same trends with regards to people getting their information mainly through social media distorted looking glass. It makes people overall less informed, while they believe that they are better informed. 

[danfrodo]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The quote, opens new tab, purportedly made by Harris on Jan. 21, 2021, says: “These Trumpers think we care about the constitution. We have the power now, it's time to end this They really don't get. We will block them in the courts, we will use federal law enforcement and the military. After Joe inflicts the death blow, I'll take the reigns.They will beg me for a loaf of bread.”

Dear gawd this is a hilarious quote - I mean who wrote this? Josef Stalin? “Death blow”? “Loaf of bread?” People actually believed this was real?! Seriously this sounds like a quote from freakin Conan.

ahhhh, Conan.  I love Conan.  My fave line, outside of the one above, was when he was a merc escorting a noblewoman who had been sold into a marriage she did not want.  The very angry young woman was saying how conan & his ilk from up north were barbarians, savages, etc.  Conan said "well, we may be barbarians but we don't sell our children".  Totally not off topic.  It's odd how conan is so believable in book but hard to translate onto the screen in same way.

[sburke]

7 hours ago, JonS said:

But ... why would you even care about that? Aren't you a constitutional originalist - I mean, I think you said you are, just a page or two ago? The bill of rights isn't part of the original constitution, so why would you care whether anyone upholds it or not.

It's not like those amendments are even important; since the constitution as written is perfect and needs no interpretation then surely, surely it doesn't any need amendment either.

I may disagree with Vet 0369, I don't think that is his position.  This is a sidetrack to the Ukraine discussion, and I'd not post this but he has said he's not going to reply.  My apologies to him if I get this wrong as it isn't something I agree with but -

Wiki says this better than I could:

Quote

 

Originalism is a legal theory that bases constitutional, judicial, and statutory interpretation of text on the original understanding at the time of its adoption. Proponents of the theory object to judicial activism and other interpretations related to a living constitution framework. Instead, originalists argue for democratic modifications of laws through the legislature or through constitutional amendment.

Originalism consists of a family of different theories of constitutional interpretation and can refer to original intent or original meaning. Critics of originalism often turn to the competing concept of the Living Constitution, which asserts that a constitution should evolve and be interpreted based on the context of current times. Originalism should not be confused with strict constructionism.

 

 

[sburke]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I have a working theory on this. The problem is too much information. Yep, you read that correctly. Human beings are built with a limited attention span and ability to absorb new information. At the same time we are also built for pattern recognition. So when presented an ocean of information - good, bad and ugly - we get overwhelmed.

Interesting but not sure I agree with it.

Climate change as a concept first became a topic back in the early 80s.  It was not such a controversial issue then.  Even conservatives like Margaret Thatcher viewed is as a threat.  It actually emerged from research at Exxon.  Then the oil industry took aim with a disinformation campaign to undermine the science.

How the oil industry made us doubt climate change (bbc.com)

Quote

 

"Rather than accept the scientific evidence, they made the decision to fight the facts," she said.

But this isn't just about Exxon's past actions. In the same year as the Levine presentation, 1989, many energy companies and fossil fuel dependent industries came together to form the Global Climate Coalition, which aggressively lobbied US politicians and media.

Then in 1991, the trade body that represents electrical companies in the US, the Edison Electric Institute, created a campaign called the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) which aimed to "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)". Some details of the campaign were leaked to the New York Times.

"They ran advertising campaigns designed to undermine public support, cherry picking the data to say, 'Well if the world is warming up, why is Kentucky getting colder?' They asked rhetorical questions designed to create confusion, to create doubt," argued Naomi Oreskes.

The ICE campaign identified two groups which would be most susceptible to its messaging. The first was "older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers".

The second group was "younger, low-income women," who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.

 

 

This isn't about people getting too much information- it is a deliberate targeting of sectors of the population to undermine the ability to argue from scientific fact.  The oil industry also targeted the GOP and I personally feel the repercussions of this campaign became more far reaching that originally intended.  It became the target audience for far more and the blueprint for how to attack anything where facts were problematic.

[ASL Veteran]

There is no such thing as 'unbiased' journalism / news.  Every piece of information that we process is either filtered through someone else's Lense or a person's individual bias (or both).  The question is whether or not someone knows what their biases are and what principles their beliefs are founded upon.  If you don't know the foundations upon what your beliefs are based, then you don't truly understand what you believe in or why you believe in it.  If you don't know why you believe in something, then you can hold illogical convictions or even believe in things that could be considered self-defeating.  Anyone who says that they are 'unbiased' is just lying to themselves.  

People are only going to change their convictions on their own through self-discovery and an open mind.  Step one on that journey is typically either going to be a full understanding of what your beliefs are based upon (possibly turning you into a 'true believer'), or a discovery that something you thought was 'fact' or 'truth' turns out not to be (along with a mind open enough to recognize your error and to question your beliefs).  

[Butschi]

12 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

There is no such thing as 'unbiased' journalism / news. 

True but that doesn't mean every journalist is equally bad. There are those who try to be objective. There are those who try to portray the truth - or as close to the truth as they can get - and those who lie intentionally.

This talk about all the journalists, news outlets, etc. being biased or having their own agenda is often spread by factions who indeed have an agenda, who want us to be confused and not trust journalists or others who check facts. So they can manipulate us better.

[Butschi]

45 minutes ago, sburke said:

Interesting but not sure I agree with it.

Climate change as a concept first became a topic back in the early 80s.  It was not such a controversial issue then.  Even conservatives like Margaret Thatcher viewed is as a threat.  It actually emerged from research at Exxon.  Then the oil industry took aim with a disinformation campaign to undermine the science.

How the oil industry made us doubt climate change (bbc.com)

 

This isn't about people getting too much information- it is a deliberate targeting of sectors of the population to undermine the ability to argue from scientific fact.  The oil industry also targeted the GOP and I personally feel the repercussions of this campaign became more far reaching that originally intended.  It became the target audience for far more and the blueprint for how to attack anything where facts were problematic.

Yep, that is basically the blueprint for a lot of disinformation campaigns we are seeing today. Build up your own "experts" by providing them with a serious looking background (some "institute" or foundation) or simply corrupt some actual scientists. Undermine the integrity of real experts. Then exploit media who try to hear all sides and present them equally.

You don't actually have to convince people, it is sufficient to sow enough doubt in the truth.

[acrashb]

21 hours ago, dan/california said:

U.S just needs to buy out Starlink completely.

theCapt addressed this.  I'll add one more thing: how did nationalization work out for Venezuela? Or if you prefer Muskless sources, here you go.

19 hours ago, dan/california said:

It just seems like problem when the guy who owns arguably the most strategic company in the U.S. is flagrantly nuts, and picking political sides while he is at it. AND he is financially dependent on both the Chinese and the Saudis.

Without rebutting your hyperbolic assessments, the answer is Starshield. Starshield is only possible because SpaceX has radically reduced the cost per pound to getting into orbit.

This would be the answer to any critical civilian capability that an armed forces would like to exploit.
 

[acrashb]

56 minutes ago, Butschi said:

You don't actually have to convince people, it is sufficient to sow enough doubt in the truth.

That is a core goal of Russian infowar. 

Edited 6 hours ago by acrashb

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, acrashb said:

That is a core goal of Russian infowar. 

And Elon has become a willing participant in that same Russian info war. I think that makes Starlink and Space X a special case. Obviously many of you disagree, and I am certainly wrong a lot...ask JonS, he will tell you in detail.

[Vlad]

4 hours ago, akd said:

Moscow region?

 

It's nice of the Ukrainians that they are still sending VIP invitations for Kobzon concert, if true.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DroneCombat/comments/1fqrtwf/ua_5th_assault_brigades_uav_used_fpv_strike/

UA 5th Assault Brigade's UAV used FPV strike drones to target various types of Russian reconnaissance drones at high altitude. (via Sternenko) Published September 27, 2024

 

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DroneCombat/comments/1fqopnj/ukrainian_drone_pilot_downs_a_rare_russian/

Ukrainian drone pilot downs a rare Russian "Merlin"-type reconnaissance drone, landing a direct hit through heavy EW interference. The downed drone has an estimated range of 600km and a price of approximately $300,000. (via Sternenko) September 26, 2024.

 

The usual caveats about nobody posting their misses applies, but Ukraine seems to be knocking down Russian fixed wing recon drones at scale. Given their importance to the the Russian C4SIR system that is a big deal.

Edit: We are not yet seeing many Shaheeds intercepted by quad copter, Do we think that is because the are faster than the recon drones,? Fly lower?  Don't usually emit trackable radio signals?

Edited 5 hours ago by dan/california

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://substack.com/home/post/p-149488835?source=queue&autoPlay=false

It is hard to come by reliable sociological data in wartime. Building an accurate picture of how the relatives of Russian soldiers feel about the war is difficult. But some among them bear a triple burden: they are against the invasion of Ukraine; worried for the ones they love at the frontline; but they have stopped understanding their partners. The four women we spoke to for this story fall into this category. Their names have been changed for their safety but are known to the BBC.

 

Interesting article about the micro social level of the conflict in Russia.

[dan/california]

Dmitri is outstanding as always.

 

[akd]

Very interesting thread from Kriegsforscher: