Oh interesting. No rebut of specific points or facts, just blanket disagreement?
I think its hard to call a whole article "correct" or "incorrect." This article makes many assumptions, states many things as facts, and yes - makes judgements. For the reasons states above I think the article overstates its case. It's behind the newest reporting by around two years. It misses or completely excludes important details (e.g. range requirements for retransmitter drones).
That doesn't make the article wholey incorrect or worthless. But yeah I think if someone is reading that article they should be aware of its inaccuracy, factual deficits, etc...
Happy to dive into any of the one-by-one points in the GP comment if there's questions or skepticism.
It needs to be noted that these drone videos are highly filtered - they are used as fundraising tools by Ukraine Armed Force units and then what "trends" are the spectacular videos (and often are out of context).
So while you may see videos of drones taking out tanks, they are often tanks that have already been killed and drones come in on an immobile target, etc.
You would also think that Ukraine is using more drones than Russia - based on the videos. But Russian Armed Forces don't need to fundraise for their equipment on Telegram, and what videos of Russian drone attacks that are published don't make it to trending in American social media (because "disinformation").
What's happening on the battlefield and what you see in those drone videos are very different due to selection bias.
Drones have less of a psychological effect than, say, glide bombs or artillery. This is due to the size of the munitions.
The broad thesis that war is driving innovation in drones isn't incorrect. But the supporting material in the article is (I've listed some of them above, and you seem to agree with them, point by point?). The article is overstating the case for drones, even calling them the successors of artillery. That's all my comment is addressing - let's right size and calibrate this: drones are being innovated on, however they are less effective at higher expense than they used to be, they very well may continue to trend in that direction, and they aren't a replacement for conventional weapons.
I guess another way to put it is the title of the article isn't wrong. But if you read the article, the content clearly is.
I see your point and I think you have a reasonable point of view, although I don't share it because I think to have that point of view you have to make assumptions I'm not comfortable making.
I think there's a lot of variables in terms of how the timeline could progress: how Russia is able to draw on other sources (trade) for equipment, how global economic winds enable Russia to deal with its labor shortages, how deep those stockpiles really go (already Western observers have significantly underestimated them), how much materiel is needed to sustain a war of attrition (in which Russia isn't advancing), how much Russian air power plays into a future timeline and how and whether Ukraine can mitigate Russian air power starting from its current air defense deficit.
When I look at these, and other variables and unknown quantities, it's hard for me to draw out that Russia is destined/doomed to lose a war of attrition, if supply just continues a little bit longer. We've witnessed Russia adapting significantly during the war - even avoiding (so far) a general mobilization. Furthermore I can think of several more ways in which Russia could win the war with sustained sponsorship of Ukraine (that never test scalability of equipment manufacture). In short, I respect that you've got that view, just uncomfortable of making the assumptions to get there myself.
This is an interesting comment and its great to see a source.
I just want to add a bit to France's threats to deploy troops to Ukraine for direct conflict. There's a serious case to be made that this is France playing a game of chicken, essentially trying to get the Russians to have to consider that as a possibility and plan for the contingency, thus occupying their time and forcing them to hedge resources they would otherwise employ.
Certainly nobody knows for sure - unless they have penetrated French intelligence - but this seems to be the majority take of US foreign policy analysts I've read.
Whether such a game of chicken is responsible or not is its own discussion. Although one could also point to escalatory rhetoric from the other side.
In theory, sure, but those swarm shows are pre-programmed: they aren't reacting dynamically to a (chaotic) situation on the ground and they aren't communicating with operators.
There's some far-flung future in which drones are fully autonomous and in fact don't even need antennas. At that point it's possible they can be massed. But it's a bit of a science fiction. At least, there isn't any such product available (commercial or military) and this isn't how drones are being used in war.
For economies of scale - true also of artillery and other equipment! The more you can scale production the more cost-effective the weapon. As mentioned, drones in the Russo-Ukraine war are starting to see their cost-effectiveness wane due to having to become larger (larger munitions, large antennas, etc), heaver (bigger batteries, larger munitions, etc), and non-disposable (high cost frequency hopping gear, difficult to find munitions, difficult to source batteries, etc).
Giant technological leaps could happen, but it's nerve wracking to bet the outcome of a war on something like that.
I disagree with this other than that Ukraine will definitely lose if its backers stop supporting it.
It's not really clear that Russia would surely lose the war of attrition. A realistic scenario, assuming Ukraine's sponsors sustain its support: Ukraine and Russia continue sustaining losses as they are, Russia ramps up equipment production to offset what its needing to take out of storage, still the war slows down into more static trench warfare, Russia is able to maintain the willpower to stay in the fight, and Ukraine runs of out military aged men before Russia does.
I'm not saying the above will happen. I'm just saying that the above isn't a contrived, unrealistic scenario. No matter how much Ukraine's sponsors supply it with equipment, unless they themselves enter directly into the war there's no way to offset that huge attritional asymmetry.
That's partly the point yeah. Every war is an iterative set of actions and mitigations. The point I'm making is that so far the actual effect created by the strikes hasn't come close to winning the war, and its hard to project the numbers culminating in a war-winning economic catastrophy.
None of that is to say Ukraine shouldn't try, or that it doesn't have some "annoying" affect that increases costs and complexity for Russia. It does. Just want to be accurate about the level of affect and its potential.
And again, I think November after the election is going to be the best show of what Ukraine can do.
I disagree that failing to hit targets is a significant tactical victory.
But I agree that they should continue the strike campaign. They can't do much else on the battlefield right now. It's the right thing for them to look at areas they can raise cost and complexity for the Russians. I just wouldn't round it up too much...
I disagree that Russia is losing a war of attrition on economy (look at Russia's economy vs Ukraine's!). On a materiel side, maybe, Russia is using a lot of its stockpiles and those will eventually dwindle. But Russia is not somehow out of the fight when those stockpiles get low. On the other side of attrition, Ukraine is low on military aged men, artillery, fortifications, air defense. There's a strong argument to be made that Russia is the one winning the war of attrition, at least for the foreseeable future.
Russia is winning right now. But that doesn't mean it will win. The future isn't determined. I agree with you that a prolonged war won't necessarily go Russia's way, and that it may eventually lose the will to continue.
The article makes an assumption that Ukraine has out-innovated Russia in terms of drones. That used to be true (in 2022-2023), with Ukraine's adapting low cost high availability commercial drones as weapons. However since the war has entered the long term Russia's industrial sector has outsupplied Ukraine in terms of quantity of drones, and has reached parity in terms of quality. The realities of the battlefield has seen the cheap and available commercial drones ineffective against mitigations (electronic warfare, surveillance and counter-battery, out-ranging and out-timing). Therefore the contest around drones has moved from quantity of commercial drones to cost-effective quality of drones in the face of countermeasures. This has even pushed some areas of the front to stop using FPV drones (on both sides) in favor of more traditional military drones.
The point of this is actually one of cost. Drones are effective weapons in large part due to their cost-effectiveness. As frequency-hopping modems, larger processors, and multi-frequency antennas are added to cheap drones they start getting expensive - to the point the cost-effectiveness suffers and their drawbacks start becoming more serious.
The article lists drone missions: mine clearing, evacuation, aerial drones, land drones, demining drones, ... . These are mainly overstretches. In terms of how drones have actually been employed in the war, there are naval drones which have been effective at holding Russia's Black Sea Fleet at risk, there are FPV drones which have been used primarily to stall the frontline defensively, and there are long range drones (not mentioned) that are used as an alternative to e.g. ballistic and cruise missiles.
There are R&D projects, many of them failed at employing drones for many missions. There are some partial successes in using them to lay mines (and fake mines). But there isn't as much success in using them for de-mining. Lifting a person for evac is very challenging to do with a drone, especially an autonomous one. Somehow "surveillance" doesn't make the list, but probably the #1 contribution/mission of drones is battlefield visibility.
The article compares taking 200 artillery shells to kill a building, vs 1 drone to kill a soldier. This is not only inaccurate, but it's apples-to-oranges.
Drones have not replaced artillery in the Russo-Ukraine war and they aren't going to. Drones cannot be massed because they interfere with one another in the electromagnetic spectrum. They also require a significant number of people to operate compared to artillery. The munitions on drones are far less powerful than artillery (e.g. drones have trouble destroying armor, artillery doesn't). Simple means (mesh, nets, smoke) can shut down drones - but have nothing on artillery. There's so much to say here but it's not even comparable and the article bases its primary takeaways from this incorrect assumption.
The article discusses that drones can fly "up to 22km". It doesn't mention that these require re-transmitter drones, which need separate pilots, separate modems, logistics coordination and ultimately - a much higher price tag. It can be worth it for certain missions, but it's hardly true that innovation has somehow created drones that are just better units. It's more that the employment of drones in warfare has gotten better - the command and control has gotten better.
The artificial intelligence aspect of drones is typically a "terminal flight system", one that can take over to seek non-moving targets once EW has shut down communications. While its true that Russia and Ukraine both use terminal flight guidance systems to deal with the "last mile" of EW cover, its nearly impossible to use this to hit moving targets or to hit vehicles with armor in the areas that are needed to achieve disablement or a kill.
The DoD has applied Project Maven to solve the problem the article discusses: automatically identifying targets to strike (which honestly applies to more than just drones - can be used for artillery, etc). Unfortunately Project Maven has been disappointingly significantly less accurate than human analysts at identifying battlefield targets on the same imagery.
I could go on, but I think the article is kind of stuck in 2022?
There's a certain pitch one can make for drones, and Ukraine is making that pitch. But I suspect the author might have too narrow a set of sources or some kind of biased interest, for what they are writing about.
Overall oil refineries are decent targets because they are high cost and statically located and therefore difficult to defend, but Ukraine certainly wishes it had more conventional weapons at longer ranges so that it could strike deeper and dynamic targets.
Ukraine doesn't have many better alternatives. They can strike some energy infrastructure (which they've done) in an effort to affect Russian willpower. It can also try to hit airfields (which they've done) hoping to take out equipment, but Russia has been pretty good at moving equipment out of the way.
The strike campaign itself has been moderately effective but definitely short of a war-winning enterprise. Estimates on the actual damage on production and exports has ranged between the fantastical (28%) to the banal (6%). It looks like domestic petrol supply has been hit the hardest in terms of tangible economic costs, since oil prices have remained reasonable with lessened seasonal demand and lower OPEC supply targets. Russia has additionally made deals with Kazakhstan and Belarus to attempt to mitigate some of the economic effects, has been able to repair oil refinery damage, and has experimented with a range of mitigations.
The strike campaign has been further complicated by the US election year. The Biden Administration has asked Ukraine to stop targeting oil refineries, because global oil instability could cause a crisis that ultimately causes global issues, rising prices, and Biden a second term. Such strikes are expected to uptick after November. And with the possibility of long range missiles from military sponsors, plus winter-time difficulties, this might be a good window to see what Ukraine can really do.
Either way I think the article is not about the long range drones you are alluding to here, but the small commercial sized drones and mid-cost military drones that are based on them.
I clicked through to the article. I think the title is inaccurate. The paper primarily goes into detail about the Department of Defense heavily investing in startups, incubators and silicon valley. That's the vast majority of the paper. The paper has significantly less in the way of laying out how that's been successful, or how that's transformed the MIC.
This follows (NYT?) reporting that Project Maven hasn't yet been successful, with it under-performing human analysts significantly in core missions (identifying targets).
I think a more accurate headline might be, "how the Defense Department is transforming the MIC; a bold bet on silicon valley, high-tech systems and AI"?
Posting from another account (home vs work computer). You can reach me at either.
> The US wants to prevent China's rise to global hegemon status. It has no problem with China growing in general.
The US want to prevent China's rise to even a regional hegemon status. It has a problem even with China growing to equal economic power (without a "hegemonic" component").
It would be hard to separate "growth in general" from "growth that contributes to a relative power gap narrowing." They are practically indistinguishable, so I don't see much point in trying to test from it.
> "If need be" being China starts a conflict with it's neighbors who have asked the US for help. The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
Which neighbors? So far we've discussed Philippines and Taiwan and shown this isn't true.
> The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
It would. But it would engineer a conflict to justify such an act by.
> No, the country causing instability here is the one launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait (which was happening long before the "Pivot to East Asia"), salami slicing territory, attacking vessels in the South China sea, and starting border skirmishes with India. US diplomacy and military deterrence aren't causing instability, they are holding it back.
No. The US has undertaken a significantly different policy position in order to engineer, amplify, and become in involved in existing and new disputes (which all countries have).
> Wrong. If China wanted to minimize risk of conflict with the US, it would cease stealing US IP and military secrets (again, started happening before "Pivot to East Asia"), operating unofficial police stations on US soil, hacking into US companies and infrastructure, etc. China wants to keep tensions just below the threshold that would trigger a serious conflict while antagonizing the US in ways that help it grow.
Minimize risk within the context of the situation. It's absurd to think that a country trying to grow would just say, hey the US is creating conflict over this, let's shrink to minimize risk.
This is a straw man.
> This is why I dismissed the earlier post as a gish gallop, because it was full of subtly wrong things like this that I didn't want to spend time debunking.
This has been the pattern so far though. Lots of high level accusations ("that's mental gymnastics") and no substantive specific points. If there are factual errors, discuss them, and draw out where there are issues. In any case, having a "subtlely wrong thing" is a far cry from your claim of "mental gymastics". I'm honestly trying to figure out where you think factually and logically this is wrong. What you've provided so far is hard for me to differentiate from grief over preferred vocabulary, high level pronouncements, and advancing a different but not contradictory idea.
> Biden has made multiple remarks that the US would defend Taiwan, but they've always been walked back by the White House.
This is a political tactic. It's like when Biden stated Putin should be assassinated, and then later in a small statement it's made "not official".
This is clearly and evidently the US policy, as its pushing allies and forming coalitions to interfere in a strait crisis. If this was just some rouge statement by a lone official (accidentally: the President) none of those efforts would be underway.
> Bush made similar remarks in 2000 and 2001, before the "Pivot to East Asia", and they were also walked back
Right. The Bush Administration had considered making this pivot before the Obama Administration actually did, but got bogged down in the Middle East. Interesting point though.
> The US still abides by the 45 year old Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances.
For some very complex definition of "abides." The US was supposed to reduce military shipments to Taiwan. They've increased them. The US is supposed to recognize Taiwan as part of the Republic of China. It's amplified language of independence.
> Meanwhile, China decides to surround the island with warships and conduct live-fire exercises because a single US representative visits
A US representative visit is an act of recognition of statehood. An example of the change in policy that you deny above. And an example of the US not "abiding" by Taiwan treaties.
> Who is the one destabilizing the region again?
The US, as clearly evidenced by all of the above.
> I see no reason for this conversation to continue any further at this point. Bye.
What is it that you were trying to get out of the conversation? I was (and am) trying to establish specific factual and logical context framing. Ultimately the purpose is to support the very top post - which is to understand how and why China would use access established to US infrastructure.
Based on your comment I suspect that you agree in most part with China only using that in case they engage with the US. But you'd not frame their access as a "deterrent" but as something else. Like "aggression". But it would all be flip flopped around with the facts not subtly wrong.
I'm happy to continue to discuss. But I think we can both agree about the top comment that China isn't collecting this as a surprise weapon, but in case the US engages in, and as a deterrent to, the US engaging in military activity against it.
Tesla not only looks at these, they coordinate their fixes and disclosure. Tesla runs a bug bounty program https://bugcrowd.com/tesla, contracts with security research companies to audit its vehicles, has a security researcher program where they share more access & documentation for researchers who have helped improve vehicle security, and put up both vehicles and cash in pwn2own.
Obtaining code execution, persistence, or privilege escalation on a Tesla is a formidable challenge. Pwn2own went many years without there being any compromise of the vehicle, and last year's compromise was done by a firm that dedicated a lab and team of people for more than 6 months.
Temporary destruction of farmland isn't nearly at the level of a priority as fighting for territorial control of your country. Ukraine has in fact flooded farmland (outside Kiev) as a countermeasure against Russian activity.
I don't imagine this objection as rising nearly the to level of overriding the priorities of war objectives / victory.
Here are reasons I can think of for either side of the conflict to blow the dam up.
We need to note that contextually, the dam was blown up at the start of Ukraine's Counter-Offensive against the Russian positions in the south of the country.
Purely mechanically looking at "who benefits" I have the following understanding.
Reasons it could have benefited Ukraine:
1. The flooding destroyed the Russian first lines of defence along the Dnipro as well as their artillery ranging Kherson
2. The flooding created an emergency situation on the ground requiring evacuations and therefore double-tasking Russian forces which were supposed to defend the primary surge toward Tokmak
3. The destruction of the dam makes Russian occupation of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant more difficult
4. The destruction of the dam makes Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula (which gets its water from the dam) more difficult
Reasons it could have benefited Russia:
1. If Ukraine's counter-offensive had included an attack across the Dnipro, this action would have delayed that front, allowing Russian forces to focus on the three other main fronts. (Based on what we know now it appears this was not part of Ukraine's action plan, but that's not to rule it out entirely)
I think its hard to call a whole article "correct" or "incorrect." This article makes many assumptions, states many things as facts, and yes - makes judgements. For the reasons states above I think the article overstates its case. It's behind the newest reporting by around two years. It misses or completely excludes important details (e.g. range requirements for retransmitter drones).
That doesn't make the article wholey incorrect or worthless. But yeah I think if someone is reading that article they should be aware of its inaccuracy, factual deficits, etc...
Happy to dive into any of the one-by-one points in the GP comment if there's questions or skepticism.