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Reading the headline made me think of one thing:
Gold
The part of me that has read a lot of sci-fi thinks this is super cool from a technological viewpoint.
The other part of me, which also reads sci-fi thinks thinks it’s a scary sign of things to come from an ethical perspective.
All sides agree fuck Russia.
Apparently not
As someone from Russia - this was super cool 10 years ago, now this is just the obvious making its way to battlefields, and Middle-Eastern ones long before Ukraine.
Also it’s good to be far enough from the events to talk about “scary things” only in the ethical context, but I’m going to disappoint you - warfare revolutions usually affect warfare geography too. You may see killer drones near you home in 20 years or so.
You may see killer drones near you home in 20 years or so.
Operated by your friendly local police force.
Or your friendly local militia movement. Or your friendly local “Christian state of Americas and the Pacific”. ISIS has surely made a cultural imprint. The question is what will they use instead of nasheeds.
Following Moore’s Law, might end up being sooner than that
It’s about adoption of available tools, not Moore’s Law (which isn’t a law anyway and there are physical limitations which have already kinda cancelled it). There are not technical limitations to have enormous functional combat drone fleets today. Humans are lagging behind, because humans need to learn how to conduct warfare with that.
some peoples commentary suggest to me they think they are self directed robots. its really and all drone battle if anything. A lot of warefare has been this way for awhile. us does a lot of drones. I think the main thing with this conflict is the land and sea usage being used extensively.
That Ukraine even needs so many unmanned weapons points to a deep manpower shortage.
Another possibility is that the Ukrainian government values it’s manpower more than Russian government.
Ukraine has no interest in putting even more of its population into Russia’s meat grinder… because they will obviously lose a war of attrition.
That’s not exactly a high bar
No no no, Ukraine is the one that doesn’t
That would be a possibility if we didn’t know exactly how bad is Ukraine with manpower right now, and that it’s so bad in part due to their failed major offensives, done in exactly the Russian way.
They are, right now, pulling “replaceable” personnel from things like AD to infantry.
They are being overwhelmed. In that exact dirty wasteful way Westerners in the Interwebs are laughing about, because they are not going to be drafted to a frontline to show how it’s done right.
Ukraine loses the war if no Western country commits its troops directly.
I think everyone is just hoping Russia runs out of money and political willingness to continue the war. Or if Putin dies (he seems fine, but he’s no spring chicken), good chance that ends the war.
Ukraine never had a hope of winning the war conventionally. The real question is what will be left when it’s over. Being the choke point for Russian military ambition is still a shit fucking deal.
I hope they get just as much help rebuilding after as they have gotten fighting our war. America, naturally, has a mixed record there. When someone is no longer useful to us, we tend to forget.
You can bet western countries already have troops and advisors helping in Ukraine.
I was talking about mass. Cannon fodder. That thing Ukraine is running out of, and that Western countries are not supplying.
Any army that treats their troops as “cannon fodder” deserves not only all the casualties they rack up, but the long term social, political, and economic hardship that is pretty much a guaranteed result of such a policy.
The constant rounding up & minimal training of “cannon fodder” is expensive both in the short and long term. Better to protect well trained resources and have them continue to gain experience by using more advanced weaponry that minimizes risk to them.
Ukraine is supposed to have allies which are capable of, as you said, fighting wars without the concept of cannon fodder.
They should show class then.
However, as you might have noticed, the Russia-Ukraine war started, well, with “elite”, better trained troops fighting each other. And later devolved into what there is now.
Not just that, WWII started with “professional”, “elite”, better trained troops, but you know how it was fought. And before WWII all the sides too were theoretizing about new, swift, well-organized, mobile warfare. Guderian, Liddell Hart, Tukhachevsky and who not. And they were right, but only in adding a less bloody layer, so to say, that gets eroded before things are done the old-fashioned way.
So it could just be that this - it being possible to fight a big war with an equal adversary without eventually devolving into WWII-style warfare, - is another Western myth invented to support some kind of exceptionalism.
Pretty easy to invent various myths about wars between equals when you are not ever going to fight an equal adversary, only a much weaker one.
I hope you don’t think wars in Iraq in 1991 or in 2003 or bombings of Yugoslavia are indicative of anything.
Only because they have fewer men. Have you seen the draft gangpress measures? People are being sent to be cannon fodder, under-equipped and underprepared.
Country Democracy Index Score (2023) Ukraine 5.06 Russia 2.22 The Ukrainian government requires much more support from it’s population than the Russian government. Ukraine is a hybrid regime that was making progress towards joining the EU which has strict democracy requirements for entry. Russia is an authoritarian regime.
“Hybrid regime” is just a fancy name for oligarchy, and the argument that Ukrainian state cherishes the lives of its military aged men is a bit silly. Democratic states and authoritarian states are equally as capable of using human lives as currency when they view a war as existential. They weigh that against demographic and economic concerns. That’s all.
the argument that Ukrainian state cherishes the lives of its military aged men is a bit silly
Don’t strawman, my argument is
Ukrainian government values it’s manpower more than Russian government
Do you have any evidence or arguments to counter my initial claim?
This is how it went:
You said Ukraine values its manpower more than Russia.
I agreed with you, and added that it is because they have less manpower.
You then brought up some democracy index like that was relevant to the topic.
I inferred from this that you were explaining that you believe they value manpower more due to their hybrid regime versus Russia’s authoritarian regime and disagreed with you on that cause.
You called my inferrence a “strawman” and then asked for evidence against your first claim, that I agreed with.
Please read more carefully.
I read your responses carefully. This is you apparently agreeing with me and adding that it’s because they have less manpower.
Only because they have fewer men. Have you seen the draft gangpress measures? People are being sent to be cannon fodder, under-equipped and underprepared.
I bought up the democracy index to illustrate that the Ukrainian government requires support from the Ukrainian population more than the Russian government requires support from their population. The Ukrainian government does not value their manpower just because they have less of it, the Ukrainian government is also more accountable to their population (as they are not an authoritarian regime). That is why I brought up the democracy index as it is a quantifiable measure of government accountability to their populations.
And I was disagreeing with you on that point, so I don’t know why you challenged me on the very first point you made, which I agreed with.
I don’t agree that the democracy index is really a quantifiable measure as it has several arbitrary criteria, but you could just assert that Ukraine is more democratic than Russia anyways, which is a matter of common sense.
Your argument that “democratic accountability” has something to do with it doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t follow. Ukraine has a draft. Drafts are drafts, there is no “democratic” objection to being drafted for war. Russia also drafts men as needed and the process looks quite similar sometimes, but in Ukraine it has become a severe social phenomenon.
oh just like how everyone got to test out their new weapons in the Spanish civil war
That Ukraine even needs so many unmanned weapons points to a deep manpower shortage.
In soviet Russia shortage manpowers you
(to get out of prison to join the meat grinder alongside your definitely not a sign of manpower shortage north Korean fap brigade)
Forbes’ bias is showing. It was a proof of concept, not a sign of weakness.
