They don’t have to make deals with Putin, he can’t handle the EU, and America will only help him economically. The EU is the last democratic super block, they need to stand up for those of us that still want democracy to survive. I’m Canadian, we’re fucked. Japan just signed a comprehensive security pact with the EU. Obviously they have fascist leaders inside the house as well, but really, NATO is dead, we need them to step up. Here’s hoping, with little conviction.

An important detail is that advanced western weapons are restricted to operations near our within the recognized borders if Ukraine. The arsenals, refineries, factories, and other strategic targets inside actual Russian territory have been hit with Ukrainian weapons. Most are relatively low payload drones, with some targets being serviced by Neptune land attack variants, which is definitely more advanced than anything in the Iranian arsenal for example. But I think the point stands that relatively cheap and simple systems have provided outsized results in the Ukrainian conflict.

The reason there are warning signs for Israel is because of the sheer economy of drone bombing. When Iran launched over a hundred drones, and only three hit, the media had a chuckle. I’m sure the IDF and the American planners supporting them looked very nervously at the estimated 2.4 billion USD worth of ordinance deployed during the defence. Why do you think Ukraine and Russia are building cheap drones to kill other cheap drones. It’ll be interesting to watch.

It will be interesting to see if Israel has a similar experience to Russia. They attacked with a massive advantage and were able to carry out operations with the home front secure, for awhile. Now Ukraine has developed a robust strategic strike capability that is causing serious military and economic damage. Israel may face a similar situation, even with the US willing to participate directly on their behalf.

In addition to the comments already posted, they had strategic reasons to withhold support as well. While Russia doesn’t pose a serious military or economic threat to RoK directly they could cause real problems. Part of the defensive advantage they have held against the North is a decade or three of technology lead. While joking about the actual effectiveness of Russian hardware is fun, large scale tech transfer to North Korea would change the strategic balance on the peninsula, RoK has pretty clearly sought to avoid that by limiting aid to Ukraine to non lethal items.

The more Russia barters with the North though, the less likely RoK will see it that the transfer isn’t taking place anyways. Russia is gambling for short term help and risking a major new source of munitions and hardware for their adversaries.

Structures are designed to resist vertical loading, it’s why the only buildings standing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the bombings were directly under the detonation point. They withstood the shockwave when loaded vertically, other buildings experienced side loading and collapsed. The comment about delayed fusing is right, but it’s actually tough with these comniblock buildings, there’s probably 30-40cm of reinforced concrete between each floor. Brick shit houses.

I visited Budapest this fall, there are a lot of Hungarians that don’t support this government. That said, no matter how much it sucks for those people, it’s time to start looking at removing Hungary from the EU. NATO has no removal framework since that is counter to the nature of defensive treaties, but having hostile nations within the alliance threatens it’s integrity. Perhaps new structure will be needed to allow the quarantine of compromised members. At this point I would be very concerned if Hungary has full security access to NATO intelligence and planning, not to mention equipment.

Don’t worry though, American forces will be on the ground with patriot batteries to support the genocide, we just have to say this for the annoying anti-genocide people.

This is a lot like a gang initiating new members by having them commit a crime. You won’t squeal on the crew if you’re a criminal too. Maybe the 30s and 40s aren’t so bad since Israel is mirroring the process since 48.

“We have a cruise missile at home.”

The key here is that this funding is for Ukrainian defense industry, it already has weapons systems capable of striking deep behind Russian lines. The US simply isn’t going to budge on allowing western weapons to be used, their policy is looking towards relationship reset following the end of hostilities, they don’t want Russia to lose since that could start a more prolonged cold war and period of instability. Ukraine will need to use it’s own systems, fortunately it is becoming more and more capable by the month.

This is from memory so don’t take it as fully accurate, but I believe Ukraine was something like the world’s 6th largest arms manufacturer prior to the 2014 invasion of Crimea. They know how to make things go boom.

Huh, looks like falling out of a window might be a more legit way to go for Russians than I thought.

How shocking that this broad act of terrorism by the Israelis would prompt threats of terrorism in response. Nobody could have anticipated that.

Definitely one of the Russian platforms that had proven effective in it’s intended role. The KA-52 fleet has taken a lot of casualties fortunately.

Statistically unlikely, there are very few in the country and they are being prioritized for air defence. Missions like this are far more high risk and after the early loss of an F-16 there will be no rush to expose them to front line conditions.

The US are using their influence to prevent it. France and the UK had already given permission for SCALP-EG/Stormshadow to be used. According to articles quoting a state department source, the US told Ukraine they could compromise aid if they used another nations weapons, regardless of permission. That article pointed out that the US policy doesn’t allow for a defeat of Russia that would make a “reset of relations” difficult. This slow political pressure is needed to more publicly isolate the American position and force concessions.

Unfortunately I can’t find the article again, I believe it was in Forbes. It was mentioned in a Military & History update on Ukraine.

As others mentioned, this isn’t America. Also, fraudulent calls to emergency services is a criminal offense, people who do this are usually charged and fined, or even given jail time. It’s not like it’s accepted or mainstream behavior, people just do stupid things and when combined with stupid cops it has led to tragic outcomes. In this video they seem to show up, which they HAVE to do, place the occupant in precautionary detainment, verify there is no crime underway, and release him. They would probably then take a statement, then the next thing would be to get a warrant for the call records and charge the dipshit that started the incident.

It’s a tremendous idea for Ukraine to deploy Gripen. It is much better suited to the logistics and distributed operations model being used currently. It also has integration with Stormshadow and Meteor missiles, which the F-16 doesn’t. Obviously Stormshadow is already in the Ukraine inventory and Meteor would be a very powerful addition to extend out past the reach given by F-16 and AMRAAM.

Shucks.

Targets like this are unlikely to ever be serviced by drones like Baba Yaga. This looks like multiple 1000lbs glide bomb hits, the Baba Yaga can carry 33lbs. By the time you have built the capacity to deliver powerful explosive force like this remotely you’ve already crossed from cheap drones to ballistic and cruise missiles. Most of the long range drones in use by Ukraine are carrying 40kg warheads. Cheap solutions just don’t have the hitting power, and by the time they are scaled up, they’re just the old expensive solutions.

That is actually a very meaningful order. I had to check, did they mean launchers or batteries. Looks like 17 batteries. That’s pretty big, IRIS-T is very modern kit.