not actually tho

headphones?

The best defense is a good offense and the best good offense is a pile of artillery shells.

Tack this one up to “Big L for Russia” this is a crucial propaganda and logistical failure for Putin, especially since the word that has to be coming back from the Russian front can be nothing other than silence or “they are sending us out to die without even the artillery our grandfathers were given in WW2”.

Not a good time to have news of a fire at one of your crucial artillery factories.

No, the whole point of all this flurry of concern is that shaheds are flying higher because AA gun trucks and airburst-flak have already been effective enough to strategically deny the low altitude backline of Ukraine at large to Russia.

So the shaheds have to fly higher… and thus dodging or making smart manuevers becomes less and less of a salient concept when you are thousands of meters from the nearest terrain feature that isn’t an empty void.

On the otherhand, as smart as the Shaheds get, they could have actual living human brains inside them… and coordinated machine gun fire from teams of humans would still hard counter low level flight. Have you ever bothered to watch how good humans can get at shooting clay pigeons with a shotgun…? Notice how there isn’t a large crisis in the shotgun hunter community that birds have gotten too smart to shoot anymore and they can only hit clay pigeons…

Russia desperately needs its shaheds to be effective, which means along some hardware or cost metric they need to be upgraded, changing the brain out so that when a .50 cal round blows through the wing the internal computer starts writing poetry about its impending death instead of resorting to a basic evasive manuever routine isn’t going to help things that much… I am sure there are major scary gains to make here but just saying “well now they are SMART” is the equivalent of the Windows commercials I see that are always trying to sell me new laptops in them that have AI WOW and are super vague about how that actually effects things materially…

I don’t buy it, Russia can have their super smart shaheds, I will pick your grandfather with a heart behind a machine gun…

Compare that to conscripts and draftees fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war and you’re a lot more likely to find people uncommitted to killing other human beings. Most human beings have a strong aversion to homicide, even in war.

You are confusing basic aspects of military training with regards to drilling people so that when violence starts happening they can keep functioning, with a desire to kill or a desire for violence.

A desire for violence does not make you a more effective warfighter, it simply doesn’t. There isn’t evidence of it, and the reason is obvious, modern warfare isn’t about getting the highest kill-death ratio or something. What makes you an effective warfighter is if you follow training and you have an unshakable desire to fight… which again has nothing to do with a desire for violence necessarily.

Does this mean that there will be people like your grandfather? Absolutely, if anything it was a good sign your grandfather didn’t want to murder people with a machine gun. If needed training could have helped your grandfather understand what he was doing as a skill not as a celebration of violence, but thankfully it wasn’t needed.

The answer to these questions is not to look for already violent people who have no natural incilination to avoid extreme violence, those people do not make good soldiers, they make good murderers…

Take for example US soldiers, of course with such a large military organization the quality of the troops will vary massively, but in general can you find evidence that during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that US troops were not sufficiently bloodthirsty to effectively fight the enemy? No… there was so many things wrong with those wars, but the capacity for violence among professional US soldiers was not the limting factor…?

In modern warfare most people are killed by crew served weapons like medium machine guns, rpgs, drones, mines/IEDs and most importantly artillery. These are weapons operated by professionals not murderers, in the same way that someone who prides themselves on being a skilled butcher doesn’t revel in the killing of the animal, but rather in the effectiveness of their skill. Unfortunately for Ukraine, a great number of UAV pilots have been given a burdern of having to kill very personally, perhaps even more personally than someone might with a gun and that is a terrible burden to carry. However, make no mistake, these soldiers do not look back and wish they hadn’t fought.

I think to speculate in the way you are is to misunderstood why people, HUMANS, fight at a basic level.

If humans are ever fully replaced on the battlefield, I promise you it won’t be because humans lack a sufficient capacity for explosive violence…

I am sure these kinds of tactics will have impacts but it just doesn’t make sense to me why this is going to revolutionize the effectiveness of these weapons.

Probably a lot about humans not usually liking killing other humans. Humans are more likely to accept a surrender or, miss a target due lack of dedication to taking a life or intentionally miss.

This is not how soldiers work for the most part though.

I don’t understand how being smart and not needing human input makes these weapons more effective, the job of these is to fly to a set of coordinates and blow up, where does the supercomputer come in?

The issue is the drone figuring out where it is, smart methods can definitely aid the aircraft in evading and overwhelming Ukrainian defenses but if the shaheds are forced to fly high to avoid large caliber machine guns what set of new choices is a hypercomplex AI brain going to afford a flying wing bomb at high altitude?

What is there to outsmart about a volley of large caliber machine gun fire?

webfishing

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3146520/WEBFISHING/

Yes, but also consider the basic wisdom of it, I believe the origins of the Super Tucano extend back to WW2 fighter craft like the P-51 mustang being evolved into trainer aircraft occasionally used for ground attack. Everyone gets excited about the bleeding edge of unmanned aviation development but from the perspective of the Super Tucano as an airframe… I mean… sure you can develop a fancy new heavy lift unmanned ground attack and sensors platform… or you can just take a Super Tucano and modify it.

The same thing is happening with the Lakota helicopter sort of being phased out as a manned aircraft in direct frontline military use in the US military while the same time?? the same exact model helicopter is being heavily considered for an unmanned heavy lift vehicle (well medium/light utility helicopter but from the perspective of unmanned systems “heavy”) by the US military. It is enough to make your head spin like a helicopter rotor.

I think the important thing to remember is that the media, general public, military and techpress will want to obsess over the legitimately terrifying new developments in unmanned aerial (also ground and littoral) vehicles because they are novel and intimidating. From a practical perspective however, the best platforms for unmanned navigation systems are manned aerial vehicles with a long and developed history of maintenance, documented behavior in emergency maneuvers, and extended third party market for modifying the same platform for a variety of purposes… while in the field.

To put it simply, once you get past a certain size of horse, it doesn’t really matter if a human is riding on the back of it or not, what matters is what stuff the horse is doing, whether that stuff is a stupid idea or not and whether it is being supported properly to do said horse stuff. So yeah, Super Tucanos, Aero Sharks, Lakota Helicopters… all of these types of platforms are immediately the best candidates for the future of manned or unmanned aerial surveillance, reconnaisance and defense at depth.

The main defense a rail network has is that it is fairly easy to repair track at an industrial scale so long as you can clear the area and rebuild, and as a result that even though a train is a very very vulnerable large loud target, it is difficult to know WHEN to ambush a train because you might just be standing in the middle of nowhere for hours and the train never comes before hostile patrols make contact with you.

Under this logistics system however rail networks become constant sources of intelligence on enemy movements, this seems like a disastrous idea to me given the sophistication and skill of Ukranian UAV and unmanned ground vehicle operators. Also, it wouldn’t take much to stop a whole kilometer long length train of these unmanned logistics carts, you just need to blow the one up in front with an FPV drone and the rest of them are stuck. This is the war equivalent to placing a traffic cone in front of a self driving car in order to immobilze it, and by virtue of not using a truck or a train with a human driving it Russia leaves itself open to massive amounts of logistical disruption this way… which is what loses wars ultimately.

As you point out Russian troops are screwed if they aren’t near train tracks but that also means Ukrainian intelligence can assume the Russian troops are having to tactically come within a certain distance of tracks to resupply which makes their movements massively more predictable and easier to disrupt. You just look at a satellite image and start drawing lines to the closest rail lines in enemy territory and extrapolate from there…

Trying to predict where an MRAP or APC will rush in much needed supplies to a heavily suppressed defensive unit on the otherhand is much harder to do both from the increased mobility standpoint but also from the standpoint of needing to muster a far greater degree of precise firepower needed to knock out the logistics vehicle even if you can predict where it will be.

I didn’t mean to make a rant not on topic about Ukraine, it is just I think you have to give a lot of context when linking to the words of US warhawks, I feel like I am handing out a powerful pyschedelic or something, I mean look at this shit, this person wrote this and then put THEIR NAME on it…

The US: Winning By Not Interrupting

Napoleon is credited with saying, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” and this aptly characterizes U.S. IW successes in 2024. The U.S. did not launch many bold, new IW initiatives in 2024. Instead, the U.S. refrained from interrupting Iran, its proxies, and Russia while they made terrible mistakes. This restraint deserves more credit than it receives. For example, the U.S. could have, perhaps, taken initiative and achieved early ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, but that would have rescued Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, and maybe even Hamas. By failing to interrupt, the U.S. benefitted from the destruction of Assad, the crippling of Hezbollah and Hamas, and the weakening of Iran. By the same token, a ceasefire in Ukraine would have stopped Russia’s astronomical losses and left it free to use those resources in places like Syria. The U.S. administration resisted the temptation to pursue a counterproductive ceasefire and instead allowed Russian mistakes to proceed uninterrupted.

This emphasizes a broader point about how Ukraine must pursue peace, it must be recognized that this system is stable, the war does not want to be disturbed and those on the sidelines profiting off the war on both sides are in vigorous agreement about that… or rather were until recently.

I am sorry Ukraine, with allies like these it is a miracle you are beginning to win the war, but you are.

The meaning of “frontline” gets confused very quickly the closer you zoom in, yes you are right but also Ukrainian assets whether infantry or drones can absolutely reach the intact rail lines Russia would be utilizing to get last mile logistics to their troops, is it a difficult and lifethreatening task? Yes, but for this kind of a strike this is exactly when you would take that risk and try to penetrate into the enemies backline.

It also provides a stupid easy way for Ukraine to track Russian logistics movements with surveillance equipment, since presumably these little carts are being used to resupply Russia forces at a more granular level closer to the front line than a traditional train would be useful for, but doesn’t that also just actively map out at a granular level where Russia’s infantry is and where it is massed?

You don’t even need a camera, just some kind of extremely minimal simple sensor attached to the rail that could detect a small cart passing and artillery could then pretarget and precalculate based on that and just wait until the Russians indicated they needed some refreshments…

The reason these kinds of things haven’t largely been done in rail warfare until this point, is as far as I am aware that there haven’t been many recent wars where trains and rail networks have been used in such a desperate fashion to try to maintain an offensive. Ukraine can track a logistics freight train coming into a major forward staging area, and that will give Ukraine valuable information but there isn’t much Ukraine can actually do to interdict the train, or capitalize on the vulnerable period of unloading of said train… because presumably this is all happening behind the enemies frontlines in a heavily protected area and you need a decent sized weapon to seriously hurt a train. Why would Russia do what this article is suggesting if Russia could do the above plan with traditional trains?

The answer is they can’t protect any major staging areas for their offensive anymore that are close enough to the frontlines to be relevant, which means they are LOSING… BADLY and as a result they have to increasingly decentralize their logistics the closer they get to the front which is inherently inefficient and confusing to friendly forces.

Agreed!

disc golf or board games!

68 artillery systems!

It is like giving a dog a phonebook and trying to decipher the mastermind plan the dog had to tear the phonebook up with.

I just hope the US isn’t just protecting the sale of military equipment and supplies by drawing out the war.

I think the US military industrial complex absolutely was, 1000%, but two major things happened recently that don’t give these forces the aperture to sustain the conflict anymore.

1.) Ukraine has reached a steady domestic production of towed and armored self propelled 155mm artillery, they also have a steady supply of shells or at least steady compared to what they had before.

2.) The delivery of the first AH-64 Apaches happened to Poland from the US Military/Boeing, along with the entire process that entails. In a darkly hilarious way, I don’t think even Boeing wanted to deliver these to Poland, but rather delay them being delivered, profit off more fear mongering and sell more expensive military arms (yes, they get much more expensive than an Apache… somehow…).

Apaches and specifically the Longbow system are meant to integrate with combined arms networks of aerial, ground and littoral naval units, the impact of these weapon systems extends much farther out than just the range of the cannons and rockets on them… and Poland will in a few short years have a brutally dangerous fleet of Apache helicopters that Russia will have a much much much harder time pressuring militarily. Neither European militaries or the Russian military have any depth of similar capacity in their heavy attack helicopters if they even have any… as for Ukraine I don’t know… but I just want to emphasize… these aren’t glorified slow ground attack aircraft… that isn’t their point. They are networked sensor and target tracking heavy weapons platforms that also carry human pilots.

These two changes fundamentally change the power balance of the region and make selfish agents far more likely to seek profit from accelerating the end of the war rather than extending it, at the very least it makes other powers far less likely to want to hitch their horses to Russia which only has a good outlook in the nearterm so long as they can sustain a massive offensive that is killing off their own population at a staggering rate… Once that fails… Ukraine has super artillery production, superior drone pilots and drones, superior armor and mechanization, superior training, superior morale…

The rest of the world is looking at the conflict in Ukraine and realizing the time to dally around and profit off the brutal stalemate is over, and if there is money to be made it is in jumping in now and decisively helping Ukraine.

Again, I am sure Trump and other people in the US military industrial complex realize this too, and that is one of the big levers that probably is exerting a fear onto Trump that he will look weak not bandwagoning with the rest of the world’s arms companies of any note in the masculine power rush that comes from being on the winning side…

Unless this is a triple fake and Trump won’t actually send arms to Ukraine (which is still very likely too) I don’t know how to interpret this as anything else. Trump and Putin’s plan (insofar as Trump “plans”) was for this to be much a scarier offensive for Ukraine, Putin has failed to deliver and Trump is mad that messes up his own plans…

ughh it is disgusting honestly, I hope I am wrong… well not about Russia being weaker than the western narrative portrays them as right now, I stand by that and am confident in that conclusion… I am talking about arms companies playing with people’s lives… which is another one of the most awful parts of war, it is a business for some like anything else…

I think the reason is much simpler and much more selfish, Trump is simply angry Putin is doing so terribly at the war in Ukraine. It is making Trump look weak, so he has to host a UFC tournament to try to restore that rightwing toxic masculinity vibe.

I am not kidding, I think Trump is actually genuinely afraid to be seen as close to Putin based on what Trump is hearing about the strategic position Putin is placing Russian forces into from Trump’s own military staff.

The winds have changed and Trump is a coward. Why the hell would people expect Trump to come to Putin’s aid when Putin looks weak? Trump doesn’t help weak people, he is far too weak himself to do that and retain power.

Ukrainian losses amounted to approximately 1,280 personnel in the past 24 hours.

No, this is much closer to the rate of daily Russian losses, and yeah those are horrific prices for Russia to pay for paltry gains.

Russians are throwing away their future.