My impression of the russian military is that their strategy is to give the impression that they can keep going forever (which they obviously can’t), no matter the cost, in the hopes that Ukraine will fold before they themselves crack. With this in mind, I believe that russia will keep attacking at a high rate, even far past the tipping point. I don’t think we’re really going to see how depleted the russian army is before it suddenly can’t do anything anymore. That is, I think the collapse of the russian army will look a lot like the fall of a dictatorship: First slow and almost imperceptible, then sudden and total.

While I agree with the idea, there are practical issues to reporting “drone resistance”. Mostly that drones are used to deliver anything from small hand grenades, which even the side-armour of a light APC should handle with ease, to dropping stacks of AT mines or a heavy HEAT round, both of which should defeat an MBT if hit on the roof.

There’s also the point that you have both bomber-drones, which target the roof, and FPV drones, which typically target the sides, optics, or engine.

Basically, the most reasonable “drone resistance” metrics you can report are probably whether the vehicle can withstand standard RPG rounds, and (importantly) whether it has any form of proximity defence (like TROPHY). If anything, I’m actually a bit surprised that some form of mounted shotgun that automatically targets FPV drones hasn’t become widely used yet. TROPHY is developed to target AT rockets moving at several hundred meters per second, which is complete overkill for shooting down FPV drones coming in at < 30 m/s.

There’s been a lot of talk about how effective drones are against armour, and how cheap they are vs. what is used to target them. I’ve seen surprisingly little talk about the fact that drones should be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to shoot down than rockets. Basically all you need is a shotgun and a targeting system that is much, much more rudimentary than what modern AA uses.

There’s a significant difference between consumer goods and industry here though. A consumer will buy cheap stuff today, even if it’s expected to be cheaper tomorrow, because they’re buying it for their own pleasure/consumption.

A business buys stuff as an investment to make more money. If material prices are decreasing, no one in their right mind would invest a to of money into building housing today, when they can build the same thing later for less money and turn a bigger profit. The same goes for buying equipment to expand your business. The problem with deflation isn’t that people stop buying food and consumer goods, it’s that companies stop investing money into making goods and improving their business.

Tbf. a bunch of people (myself included) are very careful of calling something out unless there’s very good reason to believe it’s LLM crap. There’s really no reason to believe this greentext is generated by an LLM.

Oh, that’s definitely true! I was honestly surprised at how much response I got to what was initially meant as a semi-joke :)

That makes sense, thanks! I’ve noticed that there have been a couple slow days lately, which backs up the explanation.

Regarding equipment, we’ve definitely seen russia dig progressively deeper into stockpiles to drag out progressively older equipment. I can’t imagine it will get better for them, as we’ve actually started seeing a decrease in the amount of destroyed artillery that could be indicating the environment isn’t as target-rich as it was a year ago.

Wow! That’s a lot more than we’ve seen for quite a while, isn’t it?

It would be interesting to see a compiled plot of how these numbers have developed over time, does anyone know where that can be found?

Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D

I believe I’ve read that potato’s were, for a significant period of time, the average Norwegians primary source of vitamin C. Not because it contains loads of vitamin C, but because people ate them by the boatload. (Don’t peel them, that gives you scurvy)

Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.

As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.

Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930’s.

Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.

Significant point: “Edible” is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.

I think the point is that the military, I assume in most countries, can accept a completely different risk picture for soldiers that society at large can accept for civilians. Thus, the military can viably mandate a vaccine that causes severe side effects in e.g. 1/1000 cases, given that the alternative (a serious disease spreading in the ranks) is worse.

Remember that by far most military casualties have historically been due to disease and other conditions not directly related to the enemies weapons. The militaries primary job is to remain combat effective, even if it means mandating a vaccine that is known to cause casualties. This kind of approach would never be acceptable for civilian society at large, where society is deemed responsible for protecting every individual. The military isn’t. It’s primarily responsible for protecting the civilian society, even at the cost of exposing soldiers to high risk scenarios.

Sure, the allies had more advanced equipment in some areas (e.g. air power). On the other hand, what made the Sherman a good tank was never that it was individually better than a Tiger, but rather that there were more of them, and that they were easier to repair in the field. Basically, Sherman’s were production-line tanks, while Tigers were not. Looking at the production time of anything from submarines to Leaopards in NATO today is what makes me think that’s a bit ironic: It takes a loooong time to build stuff today.

To be fair, the Germans (with generals like Rommel at the forefront), basically invented modern combined arms mechanised warfare. The allies were smacked around hard until they caught on to the concept.

Even more, the allies didn’t really win the war due to superior strategy, tactics, training, or equipment, but rather due to better logistics, manufacturing capacity, and more manpower. It’s actually a bit ironic that NATO has built its current doctrine around smaller but highly advanced and well trained forces; which is what the Germans relied on, rather than simpler equipment that is easy to mass produce; which is what beat the Germans.

Not really, it’s more nuanced than that. It’s about an inevitable division of responsibilities. In an effective fighting force, every individual cannot be equally responsible for all levels of strategy/tactics. At the same time, in an effective fighting force, every individual must have a rather high degree of trust in their nearest commander and brothers in arms.

The consequence of this is that an effective fighting force inevitably becomes susceptible to misuse by higher-ups. If you’re able to highjack enough of the command chain, it becomes very difficult for the remaining parts to figure out what’s going on and do the right thing. It’s more than just “soldiers are brainwashed”.

Really great article explaining how artillery has developed in Ukraine, the challenges around supporting a plethora of different systems, and why drones don’t make artillery obsolete. Thanks!

I think a crucial part of it is also that you, as a simple soldier on the ground, don’t really have a good way of figuring out the big picture.

If your sergeant tells you to “prevent anyone from entering or leaving the parliament building”, you’re very likely to assume that something bad is happening and that the army has been called in to secure the building. You basically have to trust your commanders to see the bigger picture, so that when they tell you that “the guys over there are the baddies”, you can engage them without walking over to check for yourself. If those guys are in police uniforms, that probably means the baddies got a hold of uniforms to try to sneak past you.

Yes and no: Gold has many important properties and is relatively rare, but what really makes it expensive is that enough people agree that it’s worth something.

If the only market for gold was for actual applications where gold is needed, the price would absolutely tank.

Exactly, this one. Is this a legitimate email that’s been released?? As mentioned, I instantly assumed it was cropped together as a joke.