How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

 

"Destroyed" is imprecise language by the article's author. The UK government press release uses the term "defeated", which is more accurate. Miysis is essentially an IR dazzler. Peak power draw is 1.6 kW. By way of comparison, the C-UAS laser on the DE Stryker is 26 kW, more than an order of magnitude difference. Given that I'd guess the range is fairly short.

The US Army already has a similar system (CIRCM) for it's helicopter fleet.

Ah now that makes more sense. A dazzler to confuse the missile as opposed to destroying it. This sounds more like another cycle in the air to air arms race than revolutionary. Missiles will switch to image recognition or hybrid systems. C-missile will come up with something to counter.

As to the 26kw, again I have to wonder as to its threat to aircraft if it can track and hit a bird sized UAS in a treeline. However a 26kw is more energy being pumped out, raising a risk of detection once it fires. I offer that my initial point stands: the technology required to defeat small fast agile denial systems requires such high resolution targeting and engagement that it creates denial risks of its own.

[alison]

7 hours ago, dan/california said:

Very much appreciate your pointing out that that the CCCP has refined disinformation to the highest of art forms. And that vey few non Chinese speakers can really even get a feel for what is happening in the Chinese language information space. The CCCP is of course doing everything it can to make this worse by separating mainland Chine fro the rest of the internet. That allows it to push one message inside China, and another one to Chinese speakers outside China, among many other things.

Just to clarify: Falun Gong backed disinformation is a different brand of disinformation to CCP disinformation, and it's invariably anti-CCP. Unfortunately it bears the same hallmarks, to the point they feel like two sides of the same coin. Cherry-picking statistics or studies that back up the narrative while ignoring any evidence to the contrary, framing topics in overly emotional or sensationalistic ways, weaving in rumors and innuendo so it becomes less clear which parts of the story might actually have been true, throwing in some history lectures to try bamboozle people into believing current political maneuvering or ideology is based on hundreds or thousands of years of fundamental, inescapable cultural truths, bla bla bla. It's very tedious.

The thing is, China is a massive country with a billion plus people, so it doesn't take much digging to find some story somewhere that will back up any narrative. And while it might be compelling to read a human interest story about someone in China or in the diaspora who thinks X, what's probably more important when considering geopolitics is if there is a broad cross-section of people who think X, and in particular if a significant cohort of the party apparatus with connections to Xi's ruling clique think X, especially if the official party line is still Y.

I think that in some ways the problem of gossip and rumors is something that the CCP has brought upon themselves. Deliberately keeping the party dialogs opaque means that every discussion of politics outside of the party-controlled media is hearsay by default. Inside China they can control this to a certain extent. (There was a short interview about the contemporary techniques on CMP recently: https://chinamediaproject.org/2024/10/07/chinas-sentinel-state/) But outside of China that level of control is not there, so then you get dissident groups who take the rumors and use CCP-like propaganda techniques to blow them up into epic exposés that two weeks later turn out to be the nothing baos they always were. Falun Gong (Epoch Times etc) is not the only group doing this, but they're probably one of the most visible and influential in the US. Unfortunately for people who care about getting fact-based reporting, you need to wade through an awful lot of this sort of propaganda and nonsense to try to find anything useful.

This is why a lot of China watchers suggest just reading the actual party output and trying to read between the lines to see if some future strategy is being leaked or hinted at in the way the documents are written. That kind of tea leaf reading based on concrete data from the source still seems to be more reliably predictive than working off the latest scandalous rumor that snuck past the WeChat censors and made its way out to the diaspora, amplified by Falun Gong and friends, then shared in the far-right social media ecosystem and filtered up through national media commentators and out the mouths of populist politicians to fuel a hawkishness based purely on vibes. Not the best thing to go to war over. (To be fair, CCP's own nationalist propaganda has been increasingly 騎虎難下 "ride a tiger, hard to get off" too.)

Meanwhile we know the CCP is also doing everything it can to buy off western politicians, influencers, media organizations etc. And that's where my usual long spiel about the media circles back to the topic of this thread again, because this goes for Putin's efforts to disrupt too. Transparency is the key, imo, which is why I tend to prefer media outlets that are open about their funding, articles that link their sources and journalists whose credentials are known and who have shown themselves to do critical, fact-based reporting.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, I know I am a broken record on this.

[Battlefront.com]

12 hours ago, alison said:

Just want to add my usual reminder here that you have to be careful when consuming media about China that is published by people with suspiciously vague biographies. I can't say for certain in this case, but the tone and presentation of this video feels a bit Falun Gong-ish to me. It seems I am not the only one who has noticed it:

- https://old.reddit.com/r/China/comments/zyq3ky/leis_real_talk_on_youtube_is_tagged_as_falun_gong/

- https://old.reddit.com/r/China/comments/17drg5x/are_those_channels_legit_or_not/

Now bear in mind that /r/China is also notorious for being full of anti-CCP hawks and ex-expats whose experiences in the country can sometimes be terribly out-of-date, but then most of them don't purport to be much more than forum commenters with throwaway hot takes. This person is presenting as a commentator with a unique viewpoint or special insight due to her childhood in China 40+ years ago, but aside from that point the rest is opaque. Perhaps you could give her the benefit of the doubt, but consider that this page on her site does not come across in a way that an unbiased observer would report on the Falun Gong:

- http://leisrealtalk.com/6-reasons-why-ccp-fears-falun-gong-the-most/

(Compare with wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong)

There is of course every possibility that this is an ordinary migrant who arrived in the US as child, grew up and had a successful career, saved up enough money to retire early, then decided to start up a YouTube channel just for fun, get into streaming and chatting about social and political issues related to the country of her ancestry, and it organically grew into a channel with 200k followers. But it's also possible that it's part of the far-right/conspiracy-pushing Falun Gong media network, or coming from a similar place as GTV (the Guo Wengui/Steve Bannon team-up) and other propaganda aimed at the diaspora and right-leaning Americans who might not be as familiar with the webs of influence and many layers of disinformation that surround reporting on China.

Not to say that there is nothing interesting you can glean from these kinds of videos, just be aware. Remember that there are also plenty of legitimate journalists, academics and other writers who have an established history doing fact-based reporting on China.

Forgive me if I am a bit sensitive on this front, but I lived through a bunch of this first-hand when I was in China during Hong Kong's anti-extradition bill protests in 2019 and then for the first ~8 months of COVID in 2020 and it became depressingly clear how many media outlets and YouTube influencers were completely in the pocket of either the CCP (in China/HK) or far-right conspiracy merchants (in the west). It was very tough to find credible reporting, especially after the CCP started kicking foreign journalists out of Beijing and arresting local journalists in Hong Kong.

I know it's a bit of a cop-out, but for my money the best source for getting the scoop on geopolitical maneuvers in this part of the world is still the DC thinktanks. CSIS, CFR, Brookings, all that lot. They're well-informed, well-connected and do solid English-language reporting. In my experience outside of Bill Bishop (who's basically just a very expensive RSS feed of the day's China topics) there isn't a lot on social media that's going to get you any more of an insight than what the thinktanks will publish in their next whitepaper (or what they already published in the last one).

Thanks for a reminder that extreme and distorted political garbage masquerading as objective information sources is a world wide problem that intersects with its kin wherever they are.

One of the first tests I do when something comes to me that I'm unfamiliar with is to see who else is talking about it.  Chances are that if a bunch of right wing or left wing extremists are passing it around in their own channels it is most likely of the same degree of reliability as the other garbage being passed around.  The old saying "birds of a feather flock together" certainly holds true with the Internet.

  

10 minutes ago, alison said:

The thing is, China is a massive country with a billion plus people, so it doesn't take much digging to find some story somewhere that will back up any narrative. And while it might be compelling to read a human interest story about someone in China or in the diaspora who thinks X, what's probably more important when considering geopolitics is if there is a broad cross-section of people who think X, and in particular if a significant cohort of the party apparatus with connections to Xi's ruling clique think X, especially if the official party line is still Y.

This is true everywhere, but with different names and circumstances.  For example, if you're interested in portraying X as having/doing Y, there likely is a true case to discover, document, and push.  But if you look at the group pushing this sort of message, it's almost certain that there's something similar to discover, document, and push.  So the more I hear someone being HYPER specific, the more I think "yeah, this is probably distorted".

Steve

[billbindc]

21 minutes ago, alison said:

Just to clarify: Falun Gong backed disinformation is a different brand of disinformation to CCP disinformation, and it's invariably anti-CCP. Unfortunately it bears the same hallmarks, to the point they feel like two sides of the same coin. Cherry-picking statistics or studies that back up the narrative while ignoring any evidence to the contrary, framing topics in overly emotional or sensationalistic ways, weaving in rumors and innuendo so it becomes less clear which parts of the story might actually have been true, throwing in some history lectures to try bamboozle people into believing current political maneuvering or ideology is based on hundreds or thousands of years of fundamental, inescapable cultural truths, bla bla bla. It's very tedious.

The thing is, China is a massive country with a billion plus people, so it doesn't take much digging to find some story somewhere that will back up any narrative. And while it might be compelling to read a human interest story about someone in China or in the diaspora who thinks X, what's probably more important when considering geopolitics is if there is a broad cross-section of people who think X, and in particular if a significant cohort of the party apparatus with connections to Xi's ruling clique think X, especially if the official party line is still Y.

I think that in some ways the problem of gossip and rumors is something that the CCP has brought upon themselves. Deliberately keeping the party dialogs opaque means that every discussion of politics outside of the party-controlled media is hearsay by default. Inside China they can control this to a certain extent. (There was a short interview about the contemporary techniques on CMP recently: https://chinamediaproject.org/2024/10/07/chinas-sentinel-state/) But outside of China that level of control is not there, so then you get dissident groups who take the rumors and use CCP-like propaganda techniques to blow them up into epic exposés that two weeks later turn out to be the nothing baos they always were. Falun Gong (Epoch Times etc) is not the only group doing this, but they're probably one of the most visible and influential in the US. Unfortunately for people who care about getting fact-based reporting, you need to wade through an awful lot of this sort of propaganda and nonsense to try to find anything useful.

This is why a lot of China watchers suggest just reading the actual party output and trying to read between the lines to see if some future strategy is being leaked or hinted at in the way the documents are written. That kind of tea leaf reading based on concrete data from the source still seems to be more reliably predictive than working off the latest scandalous rumor that snuck past the WeChat censors and made its way out to the diaspora, amplified by Falun Gong and friends, then shared in the far-right social media ecosystem and filtered up through national media commentators and out the mouths of populist politicians to fuel a hawkishness based purely on vibes. Not the best thing to go to war over. (To be fair, CCP's own nationalist propaganda has been increasingly 騎虎難下 "ride a tiger, hard to get off" too.)

Meanwhile we know the CCP is also doing everything it can to buy off western politicians, influencers, media organizations etc. And that's where my usual long spiel about the media circles back to the topic of this thread again, because this goes for Putin's efforts to disrupt too. Transparency is the key, imo, which is why I tend to prefer media outlets that are open about their funding, articles that link their sources and journalists whose credentials are known and who have shown themselves to do critical, fact-based reporting.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, I know I am a broken record on this.

You may find this to be useful: 

 

Harari notes that we are in the same place that Western Europe was with the invention of the printing press and it wasn't the Bible that was the best seller then. It was the QAnon-ish Malleus Maleficarum. In reality, "Information is cheap and easy. Truth is hard and expensive." and you get at the point quite well in observing that notwithstanding their own manipulations, the CCP (and Putin's government) must also contend with a very difficult information environment. 

 

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, alison said:

Just to clarify: Falun Gong backed disinformation is a different brand of disinformation to CCP disinformation, and it's invariably anti-CCP. Unfortunately it bears the same hallmarks, to the point they feel like two sides of the same coin. Cherry-picking statistics or studies that back up the narrative while ignoring any evidence to the contrary, framing topics in overly emotional or sensationalistic ways, weaving in rumors and innuendo so it becomes less clear which parts of the story might actually have been true, throwing in some history lectures to try bamboozle people into believing current political maneuvering or ideology is based on hundreds or thousands of years of fundamental, inescapable cultural truths, bla bla bla. It's very tedious.

The thing is, China is a massive country with a billion plus people, so it doesn't take much digging to find some story somewhere that will back up any narrative. And while it might be compelling to read a human interest story about someone in China or in the diaspora who thinks X, what's probably more important when considering geopolitics is if there is a broad cross-section of people who think X, and in particular if a significant cohort of the party apparatus with connections to Xi's ruling clique think X, especially if the official party line is still Y.

I think that in some ways the problem of gossip and rumors is something that the CCP has brought upon themselves. Deliberately keeping the party dialogs opaque means that every discussion of politics outside of the party-controlled media is hearsay by default. Inside China they can control this to a certain extent. (There was a short interview about the contemporary techniques on CMP recently: https://chinamediaproject.org/2024/10/07/chinas-sentinel-state/) But outside of China that level of control is not there, so then you get dissident groups who take the rumors and use CCP-like propaganda techniques to blow them up into epic exposés that two weeks later turn out to be the nothing baos they always were. Falun Gong (Epoch Times etc) is not the only group doing this, but they're probably one of the most visible and influential in the US. Unfortunately for people who care about getting fact-based reporting, you need to wade through an awful lot of this sort of propaganda and nonsense to try to find anything useful.

This is why a lot of China watchers suggest just reading the actual party output and trying to read between the lines to see if some future strategy is being leaked or hinted at in the way the documents are written. That kind of tea leaf reading based on concrete data from the source still seems to be more reliably predictive than working off the latest scandalous rumor that snuck past the WeChat censors and made its way out to the diaspora, amplified by Falun Gong and friends, then shared in the far-right social media ecosystem and filtered up through national media commentators and out the mouths of populist politicians to fuel a hawkishness based purely on vibes. Not the best thing to go to war over. (To be fair, CCP's own nationalist propaganda has been increasingly 騎虎難下 "ride a tiger, hard to get off" too.)

Meanwhile we know the CCP is also doing everything it can to buy off western politicians, influencers, media organizations etc. And that's where my usual long spiel about the media circles back to the topic of this thread again, because this goes for Putin's efforts to disrupt too. Transparency is the key, imo, which is why I tend to prefer media outlets that are open about their funding, articles that link their sources and journalists whose credentials are known and who have shown themselves to do critical, fact-based reporting.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, I know I am a broken record on this.

One well worth listening to though, we deeply appreciate a perspective from Taiwan.

 

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ah now that makes more sense. A dazzler to confuse the missile as opposed to destroying it. This sounds more like another cycle in the air to air arms race than revolutionary. Missiles will switch to image recognition or hybrid systems. C-missile will come up with something to counter.

As to the 26kw, again I have to wonder as to its threat to aircraft if it can track and hit a bird sized UAS in a treeline. However a 26kw is more energy being pumped out, raising a risk of detection once it fires. I offer that my initial point stands: the technology required to defeat small fast agile denial systems requires such high resolution targeting and engagement that it creates denial risks of its own.

Yes, the article was clunky, and then I was clunkier. I did make what I intended to be a separate reference to the possibility of a truly high power laser coming along eventually, but that requires a truly significant break thru in the efficiency of generating laser beams among other things. But they are in the process of letting the same kind of AI/ML that just won the Noble Prize for solving the protein folding problem loose on solid state physics, and superconductivity, among other things. Problem are very difficult until they aren't. 

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

You may find this to be useful: 

 

Harari notes that we are in the same place that Western Europe was with the invention of the printing press and it wasn't the Bible that was the best seller then. It was the QAnon-ish Malleus Maleficarum. In reality, "Information is cheap and easy. Truth is hard and expensive." and you get at the point quite well in observing that notwithstanding their own manipulations, the CCP (and Putin's government) must also contend with a very difficult information environment. 

 

I mean the printing press only led to a hundred years of a religious wars, and the aforementioned first pass of at q-anon kicked of the idea of witch burning for fun and profit.

[CHARLIE43]

So, we have this:

https://apnews.com/article/alabuga-russia-africa-ukraine-war-shahed-drones-bc175c4c98d752dc298c23434637417e

Perhaps some of the North Koreans are headed to the Alabuga Special Economic Zone to learn and make these drones if they haven't already. I know the zone was struck back in April by a Ukrainian UAV, but hit the dorms instead of the manufacturing facility. Plus it brings into question as to just how quickly the Russians could actually accelerate any post war rebuilding effort with outside help, knowingly or not.

Edited Tuesday at 04:18 AM by CHARLIE43

[FancyCat]

 

Quote

Ukrainian M1A1 Abrams MBTs and M2A2 Bradley IFVs are now fighting in Russia's Kursk Oblast.

Seen here, a pair of the US-supplied armored vehicles from Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade engage Russian-held buildings in the village of Novoivanovka.

Location (51.322832, 35.093003)
t.me/brygada47/1031

 

[CHARLIE43]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

Thanks for that. Got to looking at the location and found this:

Kursk Maps Show Russian Forces Slice Across Ukraine's Foothold

[Silentkilarz]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

Still blows my mind that so many years later US gear is inside of RU giving them the business.

[CHARLIE43]

An incredible story: 9 marines from the 36th Brigade found themselves surrounded in Lyubimovka, Kursk Oblast, while covering the evacuation of wounded soldiers. They called in Ukrainian artillery fire on their own position, which precisely targeted and demolished the building.… pic.twitter.com/sSYiUIdfFF

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) October 20, 2024

 

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, dan/california said:

I mean the printing press only led to a hundred years of a religious wars, and the aforementioned first pass of at q-anon kicked of the idea of witch burning for fun and profit.

Precisely Harari's point.

[Lieutenant Ash]

17 hours ago, sburke said:

if you can't fix it with a hammer, it must be an electrical problem

clearly this guy wasn't an electrical problem

Russian commander blamed for Ukraine shopping centre attack killed with hammer

'Hammer time'  -sorry,

[Lieutenant Ash]

UK hands over £2,600,000,000 of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine

A £2.6 billion loan from the United Kingdom to Ukraine could help ‘turn the table’ on Vladimir Putin’s war machine. The money is the UK’s contribution to a £38.39 billion loan package agreed by the G7 group of nations, funded by frozen Russian assets.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/uk-hands-over-2-600-000-000-of-frozen-russian-assets-to-ukraine/ss-AA1sHS2m?ocid=socialshare&pc=NMTS&cvid=098a7e0b3a674fecb7cf262d70ffa66b&ei=10#image=1

Bit of positive news.

[poesel]

11 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Look up the Sidewinder, a good short range air to air missile. Max range is 25km, went with 10kms for a short range engagement well within its envelope. It is also giving benefit of the doubt on a low energy system. The AIM-120 has an operational range of 180kms and moves as Mach 4 but it would probably be unfair to ask a laser to go out that far.

Because it has a range of 10km that does not mean it has to be defeated at that range.

The AIM-120 is a radar guided missile and has nothing to do with this discussion.

 

11 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The article mentions “jamming lasers”, not sure what that is but apparently they “destroy” missiles. My point being any system that can hit the head of a short range air to air missile moving at Mach 2.5+ and “destroy it”, is likely also going to be able to hit the sensors onboard an aircraft. Hell with that resolution they could hit the pilot. You seem sure that somehow the aircraft would be protected, even though it flies much slower. My point being this system is going to likely make denial pressures worse, not better.

As Vanir already pointed out, "jamming" is not "destroying". I wasn't aware that that needed clarification.

Again, you are simplifying things. "Hitting" does not mean "affecting". Even laser light is not perfectly parallel and suffers from diffusion in the air. Hitting is easy from far away, but to do anything to the target you need to be quite close. 1,6kW is not much - hobbyists can buy that for their laser cutter (which work at two-digit millimeter distances...).
As said before, that would work only in a dogfight situation.

 

11 hours ago, The_Capt said:

As to survivability, don’t be obtuse. As I have repeatedly stated current the ISR environment is lethal to any concentrations of forces. Concentrations above platoon level appear to create a signature that gets picked up and engaged well before it can produce results. This part is pretty much beyond debate. Further, having ground force units blazing away at the sky is a sure way to increase their detection probability.

I'm not debating that. You brought up the idea.

 

11 hours ago, The_Capt said:

A single or even two vehicle system firing whatever magic laser this thing is would be very hard to detect until they actually fire the thing. Even then, if it is very low energy but extremely precise it would be hard to detect.

What is it now? Hard to detect or not?

 

11 hours ago, The_Capt said:

In future, so we can keep the discussion civil, I would very much prefer it if you did not put words into my mouth. Particularly ones as grossly inaccurate as you just did.

Well, you are not shy to deal out to people quite harshly in your field of expertise. OTOH, you are easily - for lack of a better word - agitated if someone corrects you.

In this discussion, you have made many assumptions that are not reflected in the quoted article. I have cited you and am not aware of putting any words in your mouth. On the contrary, I could say the same of you, but I guess most things were just misunderstandings.

I don't think i that I have been uncivil to you. Please tell me where I did that - as a non-native speaker, it is sometimes difficult to get the undertones right in writing.

 

[Lieutenant Ash]

Ukraine has slammed UN secretary general Antonio Guterres for what it said was his acceptance of an invitation from “war criminal” Vladimir Putin to the Russia-hosted Brics summit this week.

“The UN secretary general declined Ukraine’s invitation to the first Global Peace Summit in Switzerland,” the ministry said. “He did, however, accept the invitation to Kazan from war criminal Putin. This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace. It only damages the UN’s reputation,” the ministry said.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/ukraine-russia-live-kyiv-outraged-by-un-chief-s-trip-to-meet-putin-as-russian-commander-killed-with-hammer/ar-AA1rr7K2?ocid=socialshare&pc=NMTS&cvid=1dd46cd2245d48aab57fc6199ad35675&ei=21

Some interesting titbits in this news feed including the above. Also more 'hammer' news and reports of overnight strikes etc.

[Lieutenant Ash]

South Korea may consider supplying weapons to Ukraine

09:34 , Rachel Hagan

South Korea may consider supplying weapons directly to Ukraine in response to growing military ties between North Korea and Russia, officials stated on Tuesday.

This follows ongoing accusations that Pyongyang has deployed troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine.

A senior official from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said the government is preparing diplomatic, economic, and military responses to various scenarios of North Korea-Russia military cooperation. These responses could include providing Ukraine with lethal weapons if the situation escalates.

 

“We are considering supplying defensive weapons as part of a phased approach, and if necessary, we may also consider offensive measures,” the official told reporters.

The remarks followed an emergency meeting of South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) to discuss North Korea’s increasing military cooperation with Russia. The NSC condemned Pyongyang for sending troops to fight as “Russia’s mercenaries,” accusing the regime of neglecting its people’s well-being and human rights.

The senior official also mentioned that a team of intelligence and defence officials would visit NATO headquarters “within the coming days” after NATO chief Mark Rutte urged President Yoon in a Monday phone call to send a delegation to strengthen information-sharing efforts.

Both Russia and North Korea have denied any arms transfers but have committed to deepening military cooperation.

Interesting story extracted from above news feed. Could be significant.

 

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, poesel said:

Because it has a range of 10km that does not mean it has to be defeated at that range.

The AIM-120 is a radar guided missile and has nothing to do with this discussion.

Fair point. Given that we had no indication of range, I went with the half-range of a Sidewinder... a fair assumption. Very good point that radar and other missile guidance systems do not appear to be affected. 

3 hours ago, poesel said:

As Vanir already pointed out, "jamming" is not "destroying". I wasn't aware that that needed clarification.

Again, you are simplifying things. "Hitting" does not mean "affecting". Even laser light is not perfectly parallel and suffers from diffusion in the air. Hitting is easy from far away, but to do anything to the target you need to be quite close. 1,6kW is not much - hobbyists can buy that for their laser cutter (which work at two-digit millimeter distances...).
As said before, that would work only in a dogfight situation.

So the part you are quoting was when all we had was that article. Vanir came in with new information after my post. Jamming is most definitely not "destroying" as the article directly claimed. It is in fact a type of neutralization. A dazzling laser designed to confuse an IR seeker is very different from "destroying a missile". I get laser dispersion in the atmosphere but until we get some actual facts on the range of this system it is very hard to tell what it may or may not do to an aircraft as part of denial suite. We have a dazzler system being upsold as some sort of missile killer in a single vague article.

3 hours ago, poesel said:

What is it now? Hard to detect or not?

Well you see, ISR signatures depend a lot on the levels of energy being pushed out into the environment. So it will depend on several factors. The power of the laser, its frequency of use and what it is standing next to. You clearly are having trouble understanding that any target on the battlefield is not "hard or easy" to detect, they have a dynamic profile based on numerous factors. So, if this were some monster high energy laser popping off every few seconds...that would make it easier to detect. If it is low energy dazzler system hiding in a bush on its own, only firing and then quickly relocating...it will be much harder to detect. Better?

3 hours ago, poesel said:

Well, you are not shy to deal out to people quite harshly in your field of expertise. OTOH, you are easily - for lack of a better word - agitated if someone corrects you.

In this discussion, you have made many assumptions that are not reflected in the quoted article. I have cited you and am not aware of putting any words in your mouth. On the contrary, I could say the same of you, but I guess most things were just misunderstandings.

I don't think i that I have been uncivil to you. Please tell me where I did that - as a non-native speaker, it is sometimes difficult to get the undertones right in writing.

You are correct, I have a low tolerance for mis and disinformation. I also have a low tolerance for poorly informed opinion being pushed out as fact - guilty as charged. I have no problem with being corrected if someone actually uses facts and evidence, as opposed to what we normally see..."wot I think". 

I made viable assumptions based on what the article actually said. The article is clearly weak and misleading in some places. We should probably wait for more information.

You definitely mis-cited me and it sounded deliberate. It is an Internet game when you don't have any actual facts. You inferred that I am proposing that every vehicle on the battlefield can be seen "from space". As I described in the response above...it depends. A platform continually pumping out EW energy is going to light up like a light bulb. A sky gun, or worse troop of them, blazing away at 50 drones swarming them, are also going to get lit up very quickly. Hell, a troop of tanks pumping out heat and noise are going to have a tough time of it. But this does not mean every motorcycle or single vehicle hiding in a treeline is going to be seen from space - that is projecting absurd hyperbole to try and discredit my stated opinions. 

But based on your questions about ISR; I do not think it was malicious or slanderous. I will retract that accusation. I think it was simple ignorance on your part. If your view of battlefield detection boils down to a digital "easy or hard" than you are likely missing the subtle nuances, possibly posed by the language barrier. In that case, I encourage you to go out and do some study on the subject.   

Edited Tuesday at 04:06 PM by The_Capt

[Battlefront.com]

A bit of humor, or homour if you're into that sort of spelling.  I've had this tab open for a while now and finally watched it:

Many of you will have seen other videos by these guys.  Generally good stuff, but this one is spot on for our thread here.

Steve

[Kraft]

Quote

South Korean government official claims North Korea sent pilots to Russia ahead of DPRK troop deployment

North Korea, which has reportedly dispatched ground troops to join Russia's war against Ukraine, has also sent fighter pilots who could fly Russian warplanes, a report said on Monday.

A government official in South Korea claimed that North Korea last month dispatched fighter pilots to Vladivostok, a city in the Russian Far East, ahead of the first deployment of its ground troops on October 8, South Korean media TV Chosun reported.

This could relate to training on Russian combat aircraft supplied to North Korea, the report said. But it could not rule out that Russia, which has suffered from a shortage of pilots during the Russia-Ukraine War, had requested assistance from the North.

https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-news-pilots-could-fly-russian-warplanes-ukraine-report-1972650

 

[billbindc]

18 minutes ago, Kraft said:

 

If their history in the Vietnam War is any guide, a lot of Russian airframes are going to be wiped off the inventory in short order.

[sburke]

Now this is just plain evil.. destroying distilleries in Russia?!  How dare you, this is completely contrary to the rules of war! Thou shall not abuse the alcohol that Russians use to abuse themselves!

 

Quote

 

Ukraine drones bombed four different distilleries in Russia early Tuesday, in what has been reported by a Telegram outlet as the largest attack on alcohol production lines that are now potentially being used to fuel Moscow's war effort.

At around 2 a.m. on October 22 explosions rang out as drones flew to the Tula region and attacked one distillery in Efremov town and another in Luzhkovsky, said Mash. A few hours later, at 5 a.m. there were reports of a drone attacking an alcohol plant in the Tambov region, resulting in a fire.

 

 

Russia's Alcohol Empire Suffers Devastating Quadruple Blow

 

 

for some reason all I could think about was this.

 

[Joe982]

45 minutes ago, sburke said:

Russia's Alcohol Empire Suffers Devastating Quadruple Blow

 

 

 

So the raw ingredients go in one end, at one point the pipe splits into two.

Producing vodka and rocket fuel.

But what if they got mixed up in the plant! Could play havoc with the rockets!

[Lieutenant Ash]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

Now this is just plain evil.. destroying distilleries in Russia?!  How dare you, this is completely contrary to the rules of war! Thou shall not abuse the alcohol that Russians use to abuse themselves!

 

 

Russia's Alcohol Empire Suffers Devastating Quadruple Blow

 

 

for some reason all I could think about was this.

 

 No vodka, morale will collapse.

[JonS]

18 hours ago, The_Capt said:

In future, so we can keep the discussion civil, I would very much prefer it if you did not put words into my mouth. Particularly ones as grossly inaccurate as you just did.

Huh. Curious.

I've been working under the assumption that you're a fan of The Golden Rule.

And yet, here you are, demanding that others not do unto you as you regularly do unto them.

Assumption: shattered.