Iron Dome is designed for protecting from home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip. And according to research the main reason for the low casualty rate is actually the early warning. How exactly is it supposed to help with real missiles and drones?

How do these scams keep happening? Why doesn't anyone care how their taxpayer money is spent?

Ukraine is using old training aircraft with a guy with a shotgun in the back shooting the drones down.

Just think the small Cessnas and pipers littered around that could be used for a similar task.

https://youtu.be/GrzzYTXgnMQ?is=zChAgYfc5ZEi25gt

Edited out bad grammer

Yea the Gepard seems like a much better fit for those cheap drones.

Unfortunately it's been long discontinued and it's successor Skyranger is still facing some technical difficulties as of recent reports.

Yeah, something is preventing them from just putting a small autocannon onto a turret and firing it from a Python script on a laptop. Russian drones and missiles seem to be just straight flying kinds, and while there are reports of Stinger type missiles seen installed on them, there haven't been reports of them growing anti-mortar radars. Most of them shouldn't need guided munitions at all to deal with.

It's not meant to. That's why Ukraine receives the support it does, because they take the brunt of it.

Yeah, obviously F-16's & humans scale very poorly for this. However:

- At one-a-day scale, political and risk considerations probably favor the expensive solution.

- Using F-16's reveals nothing about your current anti-drone defenses. (Yeah, it's also a real-world basic competence test for your air force - for better and for worse.)

- If your intel people want more data on the drones, an F-16 can haul a whole lotta intel-gathering equipment to the show.

- If you're dealing internally with some head-in-the-sand traditionalists dragging their heels on updating your doctrine/equipment/training to deal with drones, then "real world, right now" examples are probably useful.

(BTW - do the articles say "a2a missile" anywhere? F-16's typically mount a 20mm cannon, a cheap drone is not a hard target, and cannon rounds are dirt cheap by compare.)

France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).

Yeah a solid propaganda arm of the French government

The asymmetry between the drones and the F16 neutralising them quickly makes this financially unsustainable.

I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.

There's no logic behind russia's pretexts.

In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.

The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...

Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.

In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.

And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion

No

Logic

Whatsoever

Why would you want to join third world shithole?

India and China are both supporting Russia in various overt and covert ways. That's a huge fraction of the world.

Iran is even more closely linked. Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.

Plus Russia's various Toadies (which included Hungary, an EU nation, until recently)... It's a pretty sizeable bloc.

It's not yet an all out Axis and Allies situation, but it's definitely not just Russia against the world.

North Korea is definitely part of the Russian bloc now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypr5985ejo

China is a bloc unto itself

The only nations against Russia are in Europe, or run by absurdly corrupt right-wing dictators. The problem with supporting Russia is that the US is psychotic, aggressive, and takes pride in causing civilian casualties. It will starve your children to death as a openly proclaimed tactic; it loves to double-tap. Russia isn't going to hurt you for being neutral, but the US will, joyously.

Europe doesn't even really support Ukraine, it just hates Russia for defeating it in WWII. Thank God France has nukes, or Germany would be invading it again for not showing enough support for Ukraine and Israel.

edit: Poland is starting to remember what the Ukrainians did back then, too. And to notice that the psychotic Ukrainian nationalist minority (that we funded and armed) are proud of having done it, and would do it again.

This. Losing to Ukraine is a massive humiliation. Losing to NATO is “fair” in their eyes. Even now, pro-Russian sources refuse to believe the current drone swarms and highly advanced deep strike drones wrecking havoc on Russian oil infrastructure (see the official state of emergency declared in Crimea and fuel shortages in other regions) are caused by Ukrainian drones. They keep making up some sore loser nonsense about these being NATO drones or some clever trick like drones released from trucks inside Russia. Meanwhile even the Pentagon is buying Ukrainian made drones: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-a...

> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.

Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.

They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.

The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.

“This is how you "negotiate" with Turks: you kill dozens of them, then don’t apologize.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes

You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.

No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.

If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest. If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on. Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back

To strip away your rhetoric, you are saying it is Ukraine's fault for Russian drones flying into Romania.

To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...

One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.

Dozens of sensitive military bases, nuclear facilities, and airports reported incursions and some shut down their air spaces in response, are you saying the Air Force, NORTHCOM, and airport air traffic control don’t know what airplanes are? The Coast Guard and NJ state police also reported sightings and even pursued some of the drones.

They shut down their own airports and military bases because their own craft were flying over them?

Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.

A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.

FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.

No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.

What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.

war with nato means he can more easily convince the russian public to go along with mobilization

russians arent excited to go die in ukraine, but defending the homeland from NATO is a different story

The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.

Regime security for Putin in an escalation/mass mobilisation situation is high. The chances of the Russian economy surviving are poor.

A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.

Not all wars have a simple way to say who is winning, who is loosing. See the Vietnam war, different Afgan wars.

Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.

As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.

The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.

The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.

I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.

Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.

The poor health thing "Putin is sick" was a FSB psy-op. Maybe he's sick in the head but otherwise in good health.

On the contrary, the video gives an excellent analysis of Putin's options, and it's definitely worth watching.

You're right that Putin believes he's infallible, and the Nielsen makes the point that Putin often picks the most stupid option. But it also emphasizes that Europe needs to be ready to act if Putin decides to escalate, and if the US chooses to abandon NATO.

> The Youtuber has an axe to grind

It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.

He very much passes the smell test :)

Removed the copy-paste tracker.

There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine. As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.

I watched a related Chris Cappy video the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RBY1cY-GF8

> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.

yes, it is a big [citation needed] for me

Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Seems ths qualifies in spades.