How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

21 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Thank you.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ukraine-the-latest/id1612424182?i=1000673462178

Todays Ukraine Today is worth your time. There is extensive coverage of a speech and Q and A Zaluhzny did in London that I haven't seen much about anywhere else yet.

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Because Putin has waved his magical nuclear stick and made Biden hesitate, not once, but over and over again. Now you can argue that was in the best interest of the U.S., but Ukraine has paid for every one of those hesitations with blood, and territory. And the rest of the world has noticed.

I’ve been harping on this for a while, but non-proliferation is done. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan’s leadership are criminally negligent if they aren’t nuking it up at this point.

[sburke]

35 minutes ago, dan/california said:

If Ukraine was getting the level of air and missile defence support that Israel is, this would be a different discussion.

and yet the situation in the Middle East is very much in danger of spiraling out of control.  Hezbollah and Hamas while having been hit hard are not gone.  Iran is threatening to widen the conflict to include Saudis and Qatar....

[dan/california]

13 minutes ago, sburke said:

and yet the situation in the Middle East is very much in danger of spiraling out of control.  Hezbollah and Hamas while having been hit hard are not gone.  Iran is threatening to widen the conflict to include Saudis and Qatar....

Oh it very much is, although the latest tea leaf readings yesterday were that Israel has been convinced to do a limited retaliation in return for that THAAD battery, and other things. Which may be another case of Biden getting it more right than wrong. We promised Steve we would stay out of the the middle eastern mess, so I will stop there.

I have just never shaken the conclusion that letting the Ukraine war build up slowly, in the believe that Putin would make a rational cost benefit analysis and quit, has been optimistic at best. As Ukraine Today put it this morning, and this is an approximate quote, "The Russians are now fighting on European soil with Iranian missiles, Korean troops and ammo, and Chinese logistical support". This doesn't seem like a positive trend.

Edit: additional approximate quote " And the Europeans are trying to arrange Zoom calls..."

Edited 13 hours ago by dan/california

[billbindc]

42 minutes ago, dan/california said:

It may be misguided, but it is not an unreasonable reading of what has happened in the last three years. And i freely concede that Biden has gotten a lot right. He did a fantastic job with the pre war diplomacy. He did a fantastic job with the initial sanctions. He has handled a lot of the aspects of this very well. But at the end of the day Russia is still trying like bleep to roll all the way to the Polish border, and Ukrainians are dying every hour to prevent that.

Please note I am not saying Putin has won, he hasn't won anything but shell blasted wasteland, and and incomprehensible number of Russian graves. I am looking at this from Ukraines point of view, And from the point of view of a lot of other countries with unfriendly neighbors. 

If Ukraine was getting the level of air and missile defence support that Israel is, this would be a different discussion.

But it is unreasonable. If you had told anyone on February 25th, 2022 what the Biden administration had already covertly done, what they were going to do and how that would have turned out in October of 2024 you would have been absolutely ecstatic. The truth is that helping Ukraine for an entire galaxy of domestic, diplomatic, economic and strategic reasons was always going to extraordinarily difficult. Add in that wars are not predictable and managing war has always been an exercise in particularly bloody sausage making and what has been accomplished so far is pretty stunning. 

You are reflecting a dangerous mood running from Zelensky to his administration and their supporters in the US. The idea is that the US hasn't done enough, that Ukraine is somehow being betrayed by weak bureaucrats, that just one more strike permission or weapons system or promise of security guarantees will win the war. It's understandable. The suffering is awful, the casualties keep piling up and the Russians seem to keep coming on. I get it. But it is absolute poison for Ukrainian morale and American support. It lets Republicans call Zelensky an ingrate and it deflates the commitment of supporters in the US who have moved mountains to help out. 

The brutal truth is that Ukraine will suffer until Russia realizes it cannot go on and the best possible way to make that happen is to stop nipping at the party that supports the effort and make sure they win in November. Make Putin read the headlines announcing four more years of Democrats in the White House. That is the fastest way to secure a sovereign Ukraine.

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, billbindc said:

But it is unreasonable. If you had told anyone on February 25th, 2022 what the Biden administration had already covertly done, what they were going to do and how that would have turned out in October of 2024 you would have been absolutely ecstatic. The truth is that helping Ukraine for an entire galaxy of domestic, diplomatic, economic and strategic reasons was always going to extraordinarily difficult. Add in that wars are not predictable and managing war has always been an exercise in particularly bloody sausage making and what has been accomplished so far is pretty stunning. 

You are reflecting a dangerous mood running from Zelensky to his administration and their supporters in the US. The idea is that the US hasn't done enough, that Ukraine is somehow being betrayed by weak bureaucrats, that just one more strike permission or weapons system or promise of security guarantees will win the war. It's understandable. The suffering is awful, the casualties keep piling up and the Russians seem to keep coming on. I get it. But it is absolute poison for Ukrainian morale and American support. It lets Republicans call Zelensky an ingrate and it deflates the commitment of supporters in the US who have moved mountains to help out. 

The brutal truth is that Ukraine will suffer until Russia realizes it cannot go on and the best possible way to make that happen is to stop nipping at the party that supports the effort and make sure they win in November. Make Putin read the headlines announcing four more years of Democrats in the White House. That is the fastest way to secure a sovereign Ukraine.

Oh I don't disagree with that at all. But it also worth pointing out that we got Harris, and a chance at actually winning, because people finally told Biden he was wrong, and that HE had no chance to speak of.

Edit: I mean I have given Harris money, and told everyone I know to lose my number if they vote for Trump...

Edited 13 hours ago by dan/california

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1g5mbrb/footage_of_a_ukrainian_fpv_pilot_attaching_his/

 

Footage of a Ukrainian FPV pilot attaching his quad to a Russian Zala Z-16 reconnaissance UAV and dragining it down to the ground.

 

To zoom back in on the actual war... Do we know if this was planned/intentional? Or just a fuse failure? There are quite a few possibilities if they started capturing Russian observation drones intact. Especially if they could do something that would make the Russians even more likely to shoot at their own stuff.

[Vanir Ausf B]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The VTOL thing is what actually support the pressures that force a standoff a requirement. Along with other systems such as longer range AD...it is called A2/AD. And it definitely will have an impact on higher class UAS (although Class 4 are up there with the F35).

Ok, fine. I think we've killed this one to death.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

TI think I can say with some confidence that "you did not know this." Your whole "Peter-Paul" schtick and "MCOTS/COTS right now, not Force 2040" kinda gave it away.

RE: "MCOTS/COTS right now, not Force 2024", you think I was making that up or interpreting? It's literally the DoDs own description of Replicator 2. I assumed you knew that.

My expectation is that Replicator 2 will deliver meaningfully improved C-sUAS protection to critical assets within 24 months of Congress approving funding.

https://media.defense.gov/2024/Sep/30/2003555473/-1/-1/0/REPLICATOR-2-MEMO-SD-SIGNED.PDF

Whether that happens or not time will tell, but if you don't like it/don't believe it your issue is with the DoD, no me.

RE: "Peter-Paul" schtick, I stated right in that paragraph that "I get the argument that anything spent could at least in theory go to Force 2040 or whatever we want to call it." Unless I have completely misunderstood you that is at least directionality aligned with your point, yet it's ignored because it doesn't fit your narrative.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 Further your narrow translation of what Walting is proposing also draws some pretty deep lines under your base level of knowledge.

My "narrow translation"? You mean this snippet?

The question for Western land forces, which this paper aims to address, is how to extend C-UAS coverage across the relevant tactical echelons within a manageable cost and personnel burden, and in a short period of time. C-UAS defence is a minimum requirement to operate sustainably on the battlefield today; it is a problem that cannot be left to be dealt with as part of an abstract ‘future force’ concept.

That's Watling's description of his own proposal. It's literally cut and pasted from the paper.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 As to me being "full of ****": how exactly are you in a position to judge this? You are trying to defend/push proposals that looks good on paper to someone with not enough knowledge but all sorts of opinions.

I have not pushed or defended anything. I did pushed back on the VTOL drone idea specifically. Of course I don't have enough knowledge. We're talking (mostly) about systems that have yet to be fielded or even procured, operating in theoretical environments. I think I mentioned this already. None of us have "enough knowledge." We do this mainly because we enjoy discussing the subject, but all of us should guard against being dogmatic with our opinions.

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Ok, fine. I think we've killed this one to death.

RE: "MCOTS/COTS right now, not Force 2024", you think I was making that up or interpreting? It's literally the DoDs own description of Replicator 2. I assumed you knew that.

My expectation is that Replicator 2 will deliver meaningfully improved C-sUAS protection to critical assets within 24 months of Congress approving funding.

https://media.defense.gov/2024/Sep/30/2003555473/-1/-1/0/REPLICATOR-2-MEMO-SD-SIGNED.PDF

Whether that happens or not time will tell, but if you don't like it/don't believe it your issue is with the DoD, no me.

RE: "Peter-Paul" schtick, I stated right in that paragraph that "I get the argument that anything spent could at least in theory go to Force 2040 or whatever we want to call it." Unless I have completely misunderstood you that is at least directionality aligned with your point, yet it's ignored because it doesn't fit your narrative.

My "narrow translation"? You mean this snippet?

The question for Western land forces, which this paper aims to address, is how to extend C-UAS coverage across the relevant tactical echelons within a manageable cost and personnel burden, and in a short period of time. C-UAS defence is a minimum requirement to operate sustainably on the battlefield today; it is a problem that cannot be left to be dealt with as part of an abstract ‘future force’ concept.

That's Watling's description of his own proposal. It's literally cut and pasted from the paper.

I have not pushed or defended anything. I did pushed back on the VTOL drone idea specifically. Of course I don't have enough knowledge. We're talking (mostly) about systems that have yet to be fielded or even procured, operating in theoretical environments. I think I mentioned this already. None of us have "enough knowledge." We do this mainly because we enjoy discussing the subject, but all of us should guard against being dogmatic with our opinions.

Ok, lets talk about Replicator 2 then. Looking at that memo we have a 2026 to budget timeline with delivery in 2028 - this is a panic buy. Looks like they are going to spend a billion on problem definition alone:

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2024/10/15/for-replicator-2-army-wants-ai-enabled-counter-drone-tech/

I guess it depends on what this whole venture consists of but again...not all about drones. What other DoD spending is this tied to. This whole problem really needs an omnibus approach by this point or every service is going to run in every other direction.

If you had any inkling of military FD and acquisition you would know that the investment profiles are always filled to the gunnels, and the staff who actually do all the work maxed. This "billion dollar in requirements alone" will definitely suck the O2 out of the room. My central "narrative" is that a mad scramble - and this is starting to look like one - will hurt "Force 2024" by ensuring there are no resources to look at the broader problem. 

Walting is not wrong but he is also not right. The narrowness of your interpretation was when I challenged this, you went "air superiority" and then we went on that journey.  And then we landed here.

My central thesis is pretty simple - if we run off trying to fix drones, we are going to miss the other challenges. You think I have not already lived this with EIDs? Good god, it became all about C-IED, like if we could somehow solve for IEDs Iraq and Afghanistan would become thriving democracies overnight. That scramble sucked so much air out of the room there was nothing left to actually try and win in COIN. FFS, we bought and sent tanks to COIN, no less. US was pretty much in the same boat - I know because I worked with the guys there.

So here we are again. Academics are jumping on the C-UAS bandwagon. Sec Def/MND's are writing memo as we scramble to stop-gap the "emergence" of UAS like it was just invented. We will spend billions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours of staff effort on this. But we will not solve the broader problem because we are all on about C-UAS. 

Look, you wanna have a conversation? You want to learn something? Hey cool, lets do that. But you seem pretty intent on pushing whatever this is as a good idea and possible solution  - I disagreed and listed a lot of reasons why - you countered, and it got weird. I am telling people why this is not a "solution" and why we need to keep an eye on the whole picture. Because it is dangerous to try and narrow this down to a single problem. Waltings sin is that he appears to promoting this. Yes, we do need to solve for UAS, and a whole bunch more. We need to take some risks and rethink some foundational stuff. 

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, lets talk about Replicator 2 then. Looking at that memo we have a 2026 to budget timeline with delivery in 2028 - this is a panic buy. Looks like they are going to spend a billion on problem definition alone:

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2024/10/15/for-replicator-2-army-wants-ai-enabled-counter-drone-tech/

I guess it depends on what this whole venture consists of but again...not all about drones. What other DoD spending is this tied to. This whole problem really needs an omnibus approach by this point or every service is going to run in every other direction.

If you had any inkling of military FD and acquisition you would know that the investment profiles are always filled to the gunnels, and the staff who actually do all the work maxed. This "billion dollar in requirements alone" will definitely suck the O2 out of the room. My central "narrative" is that a mad scramble - and this is starting to look like one - will hurt "Force 2024" by ensuring there are no resources to look at the broader problem. 

Walting is not wrong but he is also not right. The narrowness of your interpretation was when I challenged this, you went "air superiority" and then we went on that journey.  And then we landed here.

My central thesis is pretty simple - if we run off trying to fix drones, we are going to miss the other challenges. You think I have not already lived this with EIDs? Good god, it became all about C-IED, like if we could somehow solve for IEDs Iraq and Afghanistan would become thriving democracies overnight. That scramble sucked so much air out of the room there was nothing left to actually try and win in COIN. FFS, we bought and sent tanks to COIN, no less. US was pretty much in the same boat - I know because I worked with the guys there.

So here we are again. Academics are jumping on the C-UAS bandwagon. Sec Def/MND's are writing memo as we scramble to stop-gap the "emergence" of UAS like it was just invented. We will spend billions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours of staff effort on this. But we will not solve the broader problem because we are all on about C-UAS. 

Look, you wanna have a conversation? You want to learn something? Hey cool, lets do that. But you seem pretty intent on pushing whatever this is as a good idea and possible solution  - I disagreed and listed a lot of reasons why - you countered, and it got weird. I am telling people why this is not a "solution" and why we need to keep an eye on the whole picture. Because it is dangerous to try and narrow this down to a single problem. Waltings sin is that he appears to promoting this. Yes, we do need to solve for UAS, and a whole bunch more. We need to take some risks and rethink some foundational stuff. 

The issue is not drones, the issue is that wars are now being fought in a fishbowl surrounded with 4k cameras.

The recent Watling article fundamentally makes the same mistake as his book. He lists all the the reasons why things have changed utterly, in detail that borders on agonizing, then proposes a solution that covers at most half the problem. It is my working assumption, based on very little, that he knows better. He just thinks what he is proposing is the most the system can stand. 

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The issue is not drones, the issue is that wars are now being fought in a fishbowl surrounded with 4k cameras.

The recent Watling article fundamentally makes the same mistake as his book. He lists all the the reasons why things have changed utterly, in detail that borders on agonizing, then proposes a solution that covers at most half the problem. It is my working assumption, based on very little, that he knows better. He just thinks what he is proposing is the most the system can stand. 

We need to think like the Ukrainians right now. Cheap, easy and let the kids in the ranks come up with the solutions. A big centralized multi-billion dollar attempt to buy our way out of this mess is not going to work. I mean, of course we are going to need infrastructure defence. Unless we are fighting in NA, we are going to need to have this. But as to manoeuvre, we can probably solve for small wars and COIN/CT, but the near-peer/peer solutions are much bigger than C-UAS. Mad corporate buys can do a lot of harm. Does anyone want to guess what kind of premium the taxpayer is going to pay to get industry up and running in this business? And all to try and keep an operational manoeuvre system that is on its last legs pumping for a few more years?

If Replicator 2 is going to start thinking about offensive drone swarms doing actual manoeuvre, or better yet, C-C4ISR, I am all in. But that is not the vibe I am getting.

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We need to think like the Ukrainians right now. Cheap, easy and let the kids in the ranks come up with the solutions.

Using souped up quad copters to take down medium altitude recon drones is example A here. This would have gotten you laughed out of any meeting in NATO, right up until the Ukrainians started doing it at scale.

[CHARLIE43]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Cheap, easy and let the kids in the ranks come up with the solutions.

 

[Joe982]

We know that troops have dug beneath enemy fortifications and planted explosives as far back as 500 years.

The latest may have been the famous craters of the Great War.

North Korea has perfected digging tunnels.

So, what is the smallest possible size, of a tiny atomic bomb?

Such a bomb could appear to be a massive amount of TNT. Plausible denyability.

Placed under the front lines could be a disaster for Ukraine.

[kimbosbread]

41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, lets talk about Replicator 2 then. Looking at that memo we have a 2026 to budget timeline with delivery in 2028 - this is a panic buy. Looks like they are going to spend a billion on problem definition alone:

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2024/10/15/for-replicator-2-army-wants-ai-enabled-counter-drone-tech/

That’s because this is a white collar jobs program for project managers.

On a more serious note why doesn’t a certain forum member start a Canadian defense company? It does seem like there is a bunch of low hanging fruit that could be pursued without needing a giant MIC behind it.

[kimbosbread]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

If Replicator 2 is going to start thinking about offensive drone swarms doing actual manoeuvre, or better yet, C-C4ISR, I am all in. But that is not the vibe I am getting.

What I want to see is the MVP of the offensive drone swarm + ISR. I’m curious what everybody else thinks this is.

My opinion: Some sort of ghetto MALE platform like Orlan with one of those NVidia Jetson boards that lets it classify everything it sees, and then some smaller loitering munitions (fixed wing) that can be notified where to go boom and have a few hours of endurance. And they can notify back when they are close to target if it for example is a schoolbus full of kids, or nuns on a roadtrip, instead of a panzer. The crucial elements are (1) this is all autonomous; there are some targetting preferences built in, but there’s no human in the loop and (2) communication is asynchronous so there is minimal radio noise and thus detectability.

[acrashb]

10 minutes ago, Joe982 said:

Such a bomb could appear to be a massive amount of TNT. Plausible denyability.

Nuclear weapons have unique signatures.  For example, the waveforms generated by nuclear and TNT explosions can differ. Nuclear explosions often produce more complex and longer-duration waveforms.  As seen on seismographs.  Then there's the radiation.

[Hapless]

10 minutes ago, Joe982 said:

We know that troops have dug beneath enemy fortifications and planted explosives as far back as 500 years.

The latest may have been the famous craters of the Great War.

North Korea has perfected digging tunnels.

So, what is the smallest possible size, of a tiny atomic bomb?

Such a bomb could appear to be a massive amount of TNT. Plausible denyability.

Placed under the front lines could be a disaster for Ukraine.

Happened a few times in Syria (worth muting):

Not nuclear, obviously. Personally, I don't see the point. It's a lot of effort to dig a tunnel (and for Pavel and Boris to manually carry a nuke down it like the Chuckle Brothers) in order to... get the same effect you can get with a sky full of artillery and glide bombs.

I doubt it would be deniable either- if it's close enough to the surface to actually have an effect, then some radioactive material is going to get out and the hypersensitivity of modern detector equipments means it'll be sniffed out pretty quick.

[JonS]

19 hours ago, The_Capt said:

No one is going to take a $110 million dollar aircraft and play “trigonometry” with it.

Hmm. That's exactly what someone did with the SR-71, of which there were orders of magnitude fewer built. Granted the -71 was a bit cheaper, although that was in old money.

[dan/california]

12 minutes ago, JonS said:

Hmm. That's exactly what someone did with the SR-71, of which there were orders of magnitude fewer built. Granted the -71 was a bit cheaper, although that was in old money.

Of course the SR-71 got built because we played the game with the U-2, and lost.

[akd]

2nd Assault Battalion, 3rd Separate Assault Brigade operation in Kharkiv region:

Third part of documentary about International Legion’s Chosen Company at Pervomaiske:

 

[JonS]

5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1g5r28p/more_footage_of_the_himars_cluster_munition/

More / better footage of the recent hits on a training area for snipers, cluster GMLRs were right on target. 

That's interesting footage, for a number of reasons.

First off; WTF were the Russians up to having a relaxed range-day on a billiard table within reach of surface fires!?

Secondly, the MPI wasn't right on target, it was quite a ways off where the dozen or so dudes were. The overall footprint is big enough that they still got stomped by it, which makes this video is a really good illustration of several things.

* Getting a good target grid is hard

Given the prominent range bunding, it should have been trivial to get an 8-figure grid to the end of that range where the dudes were clustered. 8-figures gives you up-to 10m of error, or about the width of that lane, The actual MPI looked like it was 100-150m off to the right and 'up' (away from the camera) a bit. Maybe they didn't have good or updated maps. Maybe the range was only recently built and hadn't been marked (although it appears to have seen quite a lot of use, given all the bare earth). Maybe the GPS was on the fritz. Maybe they didn't account for met properly. Maybe Private Numbnuts fat fingered the grid. Whatever, the MPI was further away than I would have expected.

* surface fires is an area weapon, and that's a good thing

Despite not getting the grid right, the dudes got stomped, because by design surface fires is an area weapon. Precision weapons are definitely great, except when they precisely hit the wrong grid.

* even in the time of supposedly ubiquitous surveillance, cover and concealment is important.

These dudes were standing around yarning in the open, with approximately zero concealment effort on display. However, imagine this was a couple of guys you'd glimpsed or sensed in some cover - trees, buildings, whatever. Is that all the enemy there are here? Unlikely. We can precisely zap those few guys (assuming good grids ...), but do they have friends? In a conventional-ish war you can safely assume that if you see a couple of guys they are probably part of a platoon, so there's another 20-odd blokes around there somewhere, and the platoon is likely part of a company so there's a further 50-100 chaps nearby ... but where? A map recce will throw up some likely areas to consider or exclude (ie, probably not in that big bare field over there, but possibly in this village or that block of trees) and detailed surveillance over time will definitely show you a lot more as they reveal themselves, but that all takes time. Or you can take that big and righteous fist of god and smite all the heathens you can see immediately while simultaneously make the surrounding area really really unhealthy for all their mates. Then you can go on about your day.

Or, if you've you've bet the farm on drones, you can spend the rest of the day and the rest of the week wishing you'd kept some surface fires capability while your drone operator buddies slowly but precisely plink baddies one by one as they gradually reveal themselves.

Edited 10 hours ago by JonS

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, JonS said:

That's interesting footage, for a number of reasons.

First off, WTF were the Russians up to having a relaxed range-day on a billiard table within range of surface fires!?

Secondly, the 'MPI' of the cluster was quite a ways off where the dozen or so dues were. The overall footprint is big enough that they still got stomped by it, but this video is a really good illustration of several things.

* Getting a good target grid is hard

Given the prominent range bunding, it should have been trivial to get an 8-figure grid to the end of that range where the dudes were clustered. 8-figures gives you a 10m error, or about the width of that lane, The actual MPI looked like it was 100-150m off to the right and 'up' (away from the camera) a bit. Maybe they didn't have good or updated maps. Maybe the range was only recently built. Maybe the GPS was on the fritz. Maybe they didn't account for met properly. Maybe Private Numbnuts fat fingered the grid. Whatever, the MPI was further away than I would have expected.

* surface fires is an area weapon, and that's a good thing

Despite not getting the grid right, the dudes got stomped, because by design surface fires is an area weapon. Precision weapons are definitely great, except when they precisely hit the wrong grid.

* even in the time of supposedly ubiquitous surveillance, cover and concealment is important.

These dudes were standing around yarning in the open, with approximately zero concealment effort on display. However, imagine this was a couple of guys you'd glimpsed or sensed in some cover - trees, buildings, whatever. Is that all the enemy there are here? Unlikely. We can precisely zap those few guys (assuming good grids ...), but do they have friends? In a conventional-ish war you can safely assume that if you see a couple of guys they are probably part of a platoon, so there's another 20-odd blokes around there somewhere, and the platoon is likely part of a company so there's a further 50-100 chaps nearby ... but where? A map recce will throw up some likely areas to consider or exclude (ie, probably not in that big bare field over there, but possibly in this village or that block of trees) and detailed surveillance over time will definitely show you a lot more as they reveal themselves, but that all takes time. Or you can take the big and righteous fist of god and smite the ones you can see immediately and make the surrounding area really really unhealthy for all their mates, then go on about your day.

Or, if you've you've bet the farm on drones, you can spend the rest of the day and the rest of the week wishing you'd kept some surface fires capability while your drone operator buddies slowly but precisely plink baddies one by one as they gradually reveal themselves.

Did you just argue in favor of cluster munitions?

[JonS]

They absolutely have a role. Have I ever indicated otherwise?

I think cluster munitions are often a bad idea, and their cons need to be really carefully considered before poisoning the land - especially your own land - with them. Many folks in this thread keep grasping for that one magical Game Changer(tm) that's going to Win The War(tm) for Ukraine. Even after 2 1/2 years the search for that unicorn goes on.

Spoiler alert: cluster munitions were never that unicorn, because unicorns don't exist.

 

 

All that aside; in this video the fall of the sub-munitions is a really handy example of/metaphor for the MPI and dispersion of rounds from a battery or battalion/regiment.

Edited 10 hours ago by JonS