Drones and Economic Warfare

Daniel Miessler on Twitter/X:

Something that the Ukraine and Iran wars have taught me is that for a lot of countries, including very big countries, there are a small number of buildings and infrastructure components that are required for their economy to function. . . .

You can just make a list of oil refineries and production plants and the infrastructure around their main exports, and you can just attack them and destroy them and take them off the list.

4 years ago I would have thought there are too many of these components and they're too easy to recreate, but both of these collisions have taught me that there are far fewer and that many of them will take years, if not over a decade, to rebuild.

It's very strange to me that drones can now effectively harm the economy of a country. 

According to the Kyiv Post, Russia's capacity to refine oil has fallen by 43 percent, and I have seen other serious estimates as high as 58%. This hurts, as the long lines at gas stations show.

And now attacks on Wildberries warehouses; Wildberries is sort of the Amazon of Russia, and these warehouses hold billions of dollars worth of stuff. Forbes estimates the losses in three warehouse attacks like this.

• Seller inventory losses in the Moscow region: at least 150 billion rubles ($1.91 billion) and warehouse restoration cost: up to 33 billion rubles ($420 million).
• Seller inventory losses in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk: 100–120 billion rubles ($1.27–1.53 billion).
• Total estimated damage: 283–303 billion rubles ($3.60–3.86 billion).

On the one hand, yes, it is impressive how much damage Ukraine is doing to Russia's economy, especially when you consider that Russia has enormous air defense resources compared to most other nations. On the other, the war goes on, and neither side seems interested in peace, after many months of attacks employing tens of thousands of drones. It may be possible to seriously damage a nation's economy, but it is not easy.

Moscow, Today

Smoke from a burning warehouse after a Ukrainian drone attack.

A New Russian Joke is an Old Soviet One

A Russian man is in line at the gas station. "I've had enough," he says to his wife. "You take the wheel, I'm going to shoot Putin."

After two hours he returns and gets back behind the wheel.

His wife asks him, "Did you shoot him?"

And he replies, "No, the line to shoot Putin is longer than this one!" 

–source

Helicopters and Drones

People who have been pondering the impact of drones on warfare have pointed to helicopters as a system that drones might render useless. The downing of a US Apache by an Iranian Shahed — a very high tech helicopter destroyed by a fairly primitive drone — points out what concerns analysts. Helicopters have pretty much disappeared from the Ukrainian battlefield, due to the density of drones, and senior US officers have worried publicly about evacuation of wounded men from the battlefield as a particular task that drones may have made it impossible for helicopters to do. 

Several countries have scaled back planned buys of new helicopters as militaries try to figure out if they can be used on the modern battlefield, and, if so, how.

Nature Adapts

Bird's nest in Ukraine made largely from discarded fiber optic drone cables. (Source)

W.T. Sherman on R.E. Lee and U.S. Grant

In 1887 William Tecumseh Sherman published an article in a British magazine responding to an earlier piece in which a British officer held up Robert E. Lee as a military paragon, equal to George Washington as a soldier and a man. Sherman begged to differ. Excerpts:

Lee's sphere of action was, however, local. He never rose to the grand problem which involved a continent and future generations. His Virginia was to him the world. Though familiar with the geography of the interior of this great continent, he stood like a stone wall to defend Virginia against the “Huns and Goths” of the North, and he did it like a valiant knight as he was. He stood at the front porch battling with the flames whilst the kitchen and house were burning, sure in the end to consume the whole. Only twice, at Antietam and Gettysburg, did he venture outside on the “offensive defensive.” In the first instance he knew personally his antagonist, and that a large fraction of his force would be held in reserve; in the last he assumed the bold “offensive,” was badly beaten by Meade, and forced to retreat back to Virginia. As an aggressive soldier Lee was not a success, and in war that is the true and proper test. In defending Virginia and Richmond he did all a man could, but to him Virginia seemed the “Confederacy,” and he stayed there whilst the Northern armies at the West were gaining the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, Georgia, South and North Carolina, yea, the Roanoke, after which his military acumen taught him that further tarrying in Richmond was absolute suicide. . . .

U.S. Grant, by contrast

moved in co-operation with the gun-boat fleet up the Tennessee to Fort Henry, which was captured; to Fort Donelson, where a fortified place with its entire garrison of 17,000 men surrendered without conditions; then on to Shiloh, where one of the bloodiest and most successful battles of the war was fought, which first convinced our Southern brethren, who had been taught that one Southern man was equal to five Yankees, that man to man was all they wanted—then Vicksburg, Chattanooga, everywhere victorious, everywhere successful, fulfilling the wise conclusion of Mr. Lincoln that he wanted “military success.” Then he was called for the first time in his life to Washington to command an army of perfect strangers, under new conditions, and in a strange country. Casting his thoughts over a continent, giving minute instructions for several distinct armies from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, himself assuming the hardest share, he began a campaign equal in strategy, in logistics, and in tactics to any of Napoleon, and grander than any ever contemplated by England. His personal action in crossing the Rapidan in the face of Lee’s army, fighting him in the Wilderness, “forward by the left flank,” to Spottsylvania, to Richmond, and Petersburg, was the sublimity of heroism. Of course, he had a superiority of numbers and resources, but nothing like the disproportion stated by General Wolseley. At Vicksburg he began in May, 1863, the movement with less numbers than Pemberton surrendered to him along with Vicksburg in July. At Chattanooga he attacked his enemy in the strongest position possible; so strong, indeed, that Bragg, a most thorough and intelligent soldier, regarded it as unassailable, and had detached Longstreet’s corps to Knoxville, of which mistake Grant took prompt advantage, and I never heard before that Bragg thought the pursuit after his defeat was not quick and good enough to suit him; and, finally, when Lee was forced to flee from his intrenchments at Richmond and Petersburg by Sheridan’s bold and skillful action at Five Forks, I believe it is conceded that the pursuit by Sheridan and Grant was so rapid that Lee was compelled to surrender his whole army. Grant’s “strategy” embraced a continent, Lee’s a small State; Grant’s “logistics” were to supply and transport armies thousands of miles, where Lee was limited to hundreds. Grant had to conquer natural obstacles as well as hostile armies, and a hostile people; his “tactics” were to fight wherever and whenever he could capture or cripple his adversary and his resources; and when Lee laid down his arms and surrendered, Grant, by the stroke of his pen, on the instant gave him and his men terms so liberal as to disarm all criticism. Between these two men as generals I will not institute a comparison, for the mere statement of the case establishes a contrast.

Civil War buffs have a habit of thinking locally, of focusing on battles and skirmishes. But the Union won the war because of a grand strategy that Grant helped to formulate and put into action.

What's Slowing the Russian Army

Jack Watling at Foreign Affairs, from an article titled Ukraine Turns the Tide:

Russian recruitment has kept pace with losses in large part because of the strong financial incentives offered by the Kremlin, including significant pay and debt forgiveness. Although this approach has proved to be an effective way of drawing unskilled new soldiers, it has not attracted a corresponding body of technical specialists who can command reasonable salaries in the civilian or military-industrial economy. The Russian army, for example, is far below its recruitment targets for drone operators.

Pay as the primary motive for service has also created an accumulation of personnel in Russian units who are eager to avoid combat. Officers accept bribes from soldiers who don’t want to be part of an assault. Meanwhile, soldiers who break the Russian military’s growing array of contradictory standing orders are punished by being thrown into assaults. This uncompromising approach often sweeps up important support troops, such as those responsible for logistics, who have run afoul of regulations. In a force in which logistics is overwhelmingly coordinated through the social media app Telegram, but in which Telegram is banned, a conscientious logistician is at high risk of finding himself stopped by the military police and either being shaken down for money or reassigned to assault units.

The result over time has been a buildup of connected and fee-extracting soldiers at intermediate echelons, such as the regiment, and a hollowing out of personnel with any professional experience in subordinate units as they are killed or wounded in attempted assaults. The lack of quality at lower levels has seen a deterioration in performance and an inability to execute plans or orders. Many officers have received their promotions in the field, without having gone through extensive officer training, and their foremost task has been to psychologically prepare their soldiers for attacks rather than to plan and execute competent attacks in the first place.

In previous years, the devastating effect of Russian artillery, drone strikes, and glide bombs compensated for the poor performance of Russian infantry. But the battlefield now looks and functions very differently from how Russian military planners are used to imagining it. Today, the battlefield does not consist so much of opposing frontlines as it does a belt of contested territory some 18 miles wide in which both sides are intermingled. The cartographic tools that Russian planners use are not well suited to accurately reflect how forces are fighting. The result is a divergence in what Russian planners map, and what orders are actually possible to carry out. That has led to growing inefficiency in the coordination of strikes.

Nor do officers at lower levels necessarily know how to execute the orders they receive. Intermediate level officers, moreover, are encouraged to report success up the chain. These factors have brought about a growing discrepancy between where senior Russian commanders think their troops are, and the reality on the ground. As a result, the Russian military routinely makes mistakes in assigning artillery and drone assets and issues an array of orders, premised on bad information, that cannot be carried out. In short, Russian forces are increasingly unable to turn plans into military operations, with a corresponding weakening in their attacks.

Much more at the link, unpaywalled for now.

Layered Defense in Ukraine, with Some Thoughts on the Battle

Via Perun's new video on the battlefield situation in Ukraine, an example of Ukraine's new approach to defense. Many of the barriers are intended to slow or stop light troops on motorcycles and SUVs; hung up the wire, they become easy marks for drones.

The traditional way to breach such a line would involve heavy use of armored vehicles, but Russia is running low on those and is reluctant is expose them to drone attack. Russian artillery fires are also way down, partly due to the drone threat, partly due to ammunition shortages. So Russia relies on glide bombs to blast gaps in these defenses. That is going very slowly, which is why Russian progress is so slow this year.

Perun accepts the evidence that Russian progress has slowed to near zero, and he gives credence to the argument that Russia is now losing more troops than it is recruiting. He notes that this doesn't necessarily project into the future, but says there should be "cautious optimism" that things have shifted Ukraine's way.

Putin is Looking for a Way out of His War

Like Trump, Putin seems to be searching for a way out of the unwinnable war he started. Reuters:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on ​Saturday that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, remarks that came just hours after he had vowed victory in Ukraine at Moscow's most ‌scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. "I think that the matter is coming to an end," Putin told reporters.

Exactly how that end would come about it unclear, since Russia still officially maintains its maximal war aims, which an undefeated Ukraine will never accept. As Noah Smith explains, this shows the limits of dictatorial wars of choice:

Ukraine never threatened Russia at all. The whole Russian cause in this war is based on the notion that Ukraine’s potential accession to NATO and the EU was threatening Russia’s “sphere of influence.” But the idea of “spheres of influence”, while sometimes a good factual description of how powerful countries operate, is not a good moral principle. The idea that countries deserve “spheres of influence” is just the claim that powerful countries ought to dominate their weaker neighbors. In other words, it’s just imperialism.

Morality doesn’t field divisions, of course…or does it? Putin can pay desperately poor people to fight in his wars, or empty his prisons of criminals, or buy mercenaries, but can he persuade regular middle-class Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg to die for the glory of the New Russian Empire? Not really, no — which is why as soon as casualties get too high to replace without general mobilization, he starts to think about ending the war.

Ukraine, meanwhile, was defending itself against conquest — a conquest that would have stripped away its national identity, brutalized its population, and kept it in poverty. That threat provided a powerful motivation for regular Ukrainians to sign up and risk their lives on the battlefield. Ukraine became a nation in arms, while Russia was still trying to fight a “special military operation”, because Ukraine had a compelling cause and Russia had an unconvincing one.

A Painting of Medieval Galley Combat

It might surprise you to learn that historians know very little about pre-cannon naval combat. One supposes that triremes, galleys, or longships tried to ram each other but otherwise came together and the crews fought. But how did they do that? Did they have some way of coming together without breaking all their oars, or did they just accept that battles meant breaking lots of oars? Were there special troops who stood in the bow and started the fighting, as certain Viking poems suggest?

Sadly, nobody bothered to write any of this down, so we are mostly reduced to guesswork.

Which brings to a fresco that resides in Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. It was painted by Spinello Aretino in 1407-1408. It depicts the naval battle of Punta San Salvatore, supposed to have been fought in 1177 between Venice and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. There is no remotely contemporary evidence that this battle was ever fought, and the consensus seems to be that it was made up by some Venetian "historian." But for our purposes that is neither hear nor there, because what we are looking for is a depiction of galley combat in the age before artillery.

And here we have one. What does it show?

Well, for one thing we see that much of the fighting is done by soldiers who are clearly marked out from the oarsmen by their armor, shields and weapons. The soldiers include swordsmen and archers. The ships are depicted lying alongside each other, which may just have been to fit them into the painting, but anyway the are not shown meeting bow to bow. No ramming or fancy maneuvers, just coming together and fighting it out.

 It is not the best evidence, but given how little we have, it counts.

Matt Yglesias on the Iran War

Intelligent take:

They say that defeat is an orphan while victory has a thousand fathers.

So even though the invasion of Iraq was extremely popular in 2003, you rarely meet someone who’ll own up to having supported it at the time. Both that war and the one in Afghanistan shook out so badly that their architects have been retrospectively cast as a team of buffoons.

At the time, though, Colin Powell was the most popular public figure in the United States. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were old policy hands with long and wide-ranging track records. Their actions were widely embraced by knowledgeable elites, including top former officials from the Bill Clinton administration.

Which is not to say that the ideas of these members of the George W. Bush administration were good or that their policies worked (clearly they were not and did not), just that it’s not right to think of what happened in the early aughts as “a bunch of clowns took over and wrecked things with their clowning.”

The danger of this line of thought is made clear, I think, by the way that Donald Trump seems to have talked himself into a new round of military adventurism in the Middle East. If the problem with the Bushies was that a bunch of morons got the United States sucked into “forever wars” through their obsession with nation-building, then the solution is to build a team that’s not made up of morons, a team that is relentlessly focused on lethality. They put their ideas to the test with a smaller-scale strike on Iran last year. Then again in Venezuela. And it worked, so why not try it again?

What all this misses is that this is exactly what the Bush administration thought they were doing.

In the 2000 campaign, Bush denounced nation-building and peacekeeping missions as a waste of time. His team contained many believers in a Revolution in Military Affairs involving (to quote a 2002 article) the “use of smart machines that allow networked, integrated forces to become more lethal at the same time they become more agile.”

Which is just to say that they didn’t intend to get bogged down in simultaneous counterinsurgency missions. It’s not like someone was sitting around the Pentagon saying that it would be a good idea to engineer a situation where, years after the invasion, Marines were engaged in intense house-to-house fighting in Anbar province, and years after that, isolated garrisons were trying to secure American interests in a country whose politics are dominated by pro-Iranian political parties.

Quagmires happen by mistake. 

I was thinking this just the other day: Trump and Hegseth keep saying that their war will go better because they are not idiots, but whatever label you want to give to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington et al. they were not stupid.

What they shared with Trump and Hegseth was the belief that violence can be used to reshape the world as we would wish. This belief may sometimes be true, but it is always very dangerous.

Things Happening in the Middle East

Successful Iranian attacks against oil infrastructure are multiplying: here, here, here, here, here

Oil prices are rising and stock prices are bouncing around. (NY Times, CNBC)

Seems clear that neither the US nor our Gulf allies have enough cheap ways to shoot down drones, leading us to shoot $4 million Patriot interceptors at $100,000 drones. We have programs to create better anti-drone defenses, and I have written about them here, but we don't seem to have procured them in anything like the numbers needed for such a war. 

Riots in Bahrain as the Shi'ite majority protests their country's involvement in the war against Iran. Did anybody plan for this?

Turns out that the FBI agents Kash Patel recently purged for investigating Trump's document dump at Mar-a-Lago were from an elite counter-terrorism group called CI-12 with expertise in Iran. 

Trump says in the same post that 1) US weapons stockpiles are sufficient, and 2) they are depleted because Biden sent too many weapons to Ukraine. 

Three US F-15 fighters were shot down by Kuwaiti air defense. The pilots survived.

I see floundering men drowning in their own foolish hubris.

The "Plan"

I've been trying to withhold judgment, because it seems that the Trump administration actually did have a plan for Venezuela. But the signs concerning any Iran plan are not promising. The NY Times:

In a brief telephone interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.

Among the options he suggested was an outcome similar to what he engineered in Venezuela, in which only the top leader was removed during an American military strike and much of the rest of the government remained in place, but newly willing to work pragmatically with the United States. . . .

During the roughly six-minute call, Mr. Trump said he had “three very good choices” about who could lead Iran, although he declined to name them. Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, said that an interim committee would run the country until a successor to the supreme leader was chosen. . . .

When pressed on his plans for a transition of power, Mr. Trump said he hoped Iran’s elite military forces — including hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have held substantial influence and profited from the existing regime — would simply turn over their weapons to the Iranian populace. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he said.

It was those same security forces — in particular, the Basij, which organizes local militia — that opened fire on street protesters in January and killed thousands.

Then he offered a very different model of what the transition of power in Iran might look like, referring repeatedly to his experience in Venezuela after he ordered a Delta Force team to seize Mr. Maduro.

“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Mr. Trump said. . . . “Everybody’s kept their job except for two people,” Mr. Trump said of the outcome in Venezuela.

He was vague on the question of who should be in the top ruling position in Iran after the ayatollah’s death, or even who should decide. At first, when asked whom he wanted to lead Iran, he said, “I have three very good choices.” He added: “I won’t be revealing them now. Let’s get the job done first.”

But then he described a scenario in which the Iranian people would overthrow the existing government. “That’s going to be up to them about whether or not they do,” Mr. Trump said. “They’ve been talking about it for years so now they’ll obviously have an opportunity.” That would, of course, be the opposite of the Venezuela model that he had said minutes earlier he wanted to replicate.

Not encouraging. Trump says we have the weapons for four or five weeks of aerial attack. What happens in five weeks when the battered government is still in place? We're talking about a regime with thousands of determined guerrilla fighters who have been skirmishing with the US for decades. They are not likely to go quietly. So far as I can see, the only remotely plausible outcomes are 1) the regime remains in place, either chastened or with renewed fervor, and 2) we install a new regime that is then embroiled in civil war with surviving elements of the old, just like in Iraq.

Grim.

The Lonely Soldier

In one of the saddest videos of the war, a lone Russian soldier is sent on a solo march across a kilometer of open, treeless, snow-covered ground toward Ukrainian positions, without any winter camouflage. He doesn't even try to hurry, but just trudges along, knowing he is doomed. 

The Ukrainian observation drone has plenty of time to study his progress, tracking him until an attack drone can fly in to kill him.

One supposes this was some kind of punishment, but given how the Russians are operating, who knows? The whole scene summarizes for me the awful waste and inhumanity of Putin's terrible war.

There is another awful video going around these days that shows a Russian soldier sitting in a shell crater, surrounded by the corpses of seven or eight other Russians. He doesn't dodge or flinch or show any emotion as the drone flies at him, just sits there, staring straight at it, perhaps stunned by whatever killed his comrades, but perhaps welcoming an end to his nightmare.

A Russian Mil-blogger Confronts his Stuation

Russian Z-Blogger Maxim Kalashnikov contemplates the recent anniversary. Via Illia Ponomarenko:

“WE CAN DO IT AGAIN” HAS FAILED

So, the Ukrainian war has now lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War. One can say with confidence: the long-standing propaganda slogan “We can do it again!” has confidently failed. We can’t. In the fifth year of positional slaughter in Ukraine, both the leadership and the top-level command nodes (civilian and military) remain intact. The bridges across the Dnipro and major railway hubs are intact. And our infantry is forced to pay with bodies (people versus drones) for turtle-paced advances. All of this is already leading to irreversible perturbations inside the Russian Federation after the war. My soul feels extremely heavy. I am restraining my emotions as much as possible.

It is already clear that all the benefits of this war will be reaped by the USA and the PRC, while Russians are left with blood, ruins, and losses. This is, without a doubt, a case of “we have outsmarted everyone” and a triumph of foreign policy.

After 1,418 days of war, our military reputation has been severely undermined. The United States is openly mocking us. And it’s not just about what happened in Venezuela. The point is that American military analysts say: the Russian Federation failed to achieve full air supremacy, as a developed country is supposed to do, and therefore slid into a losing war of attrition.

…It is obvious that the Russian Federation is being steered toward a forced end to the war and toward further stagnation in the role of a poor and weak “junior partner” of Washington in the confrontation with the PRC.

At the same time, Kyiv receives security guarantees from Washington, NATO troops on its territory, and investments of 800 billion dollars in the reconstruction of Ukraine.

An entire era is coming to an end: when the authorities of the Russian Federation were engaged exclusively in imitating great-power status rather than creating it in reality. When PR and propaganda triumphed over real life…

In 2026, this war will be forcibly brought to an end.

After it, the Russian Federation will face the harshest hangover and “withdrawal.” A Transition is inevitable, along with shifting responsibility for what happened onto a specific individual and an analogue of the “debunking of the cult of personality at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” [When Kruschev denounced Stalin.]

This will be followed by painful attempts to reform the failed political and economic models. A new attempt at perestroika awaits us.

I reject the version according to which, after the "special military operation," an extremely harsh regime with an “electronic concentration camp” and ruthless repression will be established in the Russian Federation.

Because our “elite” is mortally afraid of such a scenario. Because it understands that repression would begin grinding it up first, launching a bloody redistribution of property and control over financial flows. Any attempt to “tighten the screws to the limit” would be extremely short-lived. The scenario of “withdrawal due to fatigue” is far more realistic.

I call on all true Russian patriots (let the pro-Western traitors go to hell) to think about how to live on. How to act in the most difficult and dangerous post-war period. 

This war has been one of the saddest events of my lifetime. It has inflicted losses on the whole world and helped nobody but arms manufacturers.

The Ukraine War in Context

As of today, the Russian attack on Ukraine has lasted as long as the German attack on the Soviet Union in WW II, from 22 June 1941 to the fall of Berlin.

Now What?

Ok, I have no love for Nicolás Maduro, and he definitely rigged the election that put him in power.

But so far as I can see the only real power center left in Venezuela is the army, and to date they have remained loyal to the Bolivarian regime. Who is going to overthrow them? Most of the opposition is in exile. If power just passes to the Vice President or the Defense Minister, what difference will that make?

I few years ago the US war-gamed a scenario of trying to overthrow Maduro and the end result was the whole country descending into anarchy. So I don't think our fighting the Venezuelan army is a great idea.

I guess we'll see, but so far this looks to me like our strike on Iran: big booms, little long-term impact.

Update: Russian foreign ministry denounces this "armed aggression."

Update: confirmed that the Vice President, Defense Minister, and Interior Minister (the regime's top enforcer) are all still at large.

Update: the one group of people who really seem to love this are Ukrainians. My Ukraine war feed is full of posts featuring Maduro and Putin talking about their great friendship.

Update: Oz Katerji sees lots of equivalences: "All the Realists must now immediately demand the surrender of Venezuela to the large nuclear power, and don’t blame me about it, I didn’t make the rules."

Update, from Big Content Guy: "big day for guys who like to monitor situations."

A Russian Report from the Front Lines

Via Andrew Perpetua:

December 2025 , Kramatorsk District, Donetsk People's Republic, Russia.

24 hours of war.

We're advancing, but the cost of these advances is only increasing.

Bringing fighters into the area has become even more difficult—the enemy controls the entire sky to a significant depth.

Now, we can only bring them in one at a time, and only on foot—it's not a guarantee, but the only solution. Going in two at a time means zero chance.

The approach is divided into several stages and stretches over two days of walking for one attacker.

From the moment the attacker begins his advance toward the front line, he is accompanied by our drone, which monitors the air situation and provides direction if the fighter starts to wander.

The concentration of enemy drone operators in the area is off the charts.

Last night, the enemy simultaneously launched seventeen FPVs against one fighter. Every one reached the objective.

After the first FPV arrived, the fighter began providing self-help with his first aid kit. But then sixteen more arrived immediately. This happened as the fighter was crossing a small river—he'll likely never be found.

The neighbors [adjacent Russian unit] are lying. They entered the first house on the outskirts of the village, but claimed that they had occupied the entire first street in the village.

Our troops advanced along this street, and as early as the third house from the edge, the houses came under enemy fire. The price of lies has once again become a reality in the fighters' lives.

This morning, another fighter tried to move into position. But the enemy spotted him, too. First, two FPVs, and then a Vampire with mines.

The unit has only one Mavic. We can't ram the enemy—there are no more birds, and we won't be able to guide fighters, track the enemy, or generally manage the battle. We also don't have fiber optic FPV.

Yes, the unit that's first on the ground has no birds. . . .

The soldiers are wondering: why does the Ministry of Defense prefer to pay colossal sums of compensation for the deaths of soldiers, when saturating the sector with fiber optics (on the ground, not in reports) could save soldiers' lives and colossal budgetary sums?

The answers will probably come later—in new high-profile corruption cases. But the soldiers' lives will never be brought back.

Perpetua recently reported video evidence for 369 Russians being killed in one day, with an average of 174/day during December.

Ukrainians Respond to Hegseth's Speech

My feed is full of posts like this, from Andrew Perpetua:

There was a Russian soldier, he was very impressive. Very highly trained. Had all the hallmarks of an excellent soldier. Obvious leadership skills, technical knowledge, muscle memory with his weapon. Great aim, physicality. Dude pulled his injured friend to safety with one arm while engaging targets (and hitting them) shooting his rifle one handed. He had great situational awareness. He knew which lines to stay out of, where he was safe. He spotted a drone watching him that was around 300 meters away, shot it down with a single bullet. Kept moving.

Ya know what happened to him?

Three drones attacked at the same time. One dive bomber dropped a grenade. He saw it coming, dove over a wall to safety. He picked up his rifle, shot down another drone with a 3 round burst. And the third drone hit him in the back killing him instantly.

Ya know who can pilot drones? 40kg women. 140kg men. Tall people, disabled people. Dude in a wheelchair can fly a drone.

Your warrior spirit is obsolete. Live in the real world.

The US is facing major decisions about the structure of our military. How much to spend on super high-end 6th generation fighters? How much on cheap drones and budget cruise missiles? How much to spend modernizing our nuclear arsenal?

And what, may I ask, does Pete Hegseth have to say about that? I don't think the warrior spirit is obsolete, but America's front-line soldiers seem to have plenty of it. What we need from leaders is wisdom.

Ceasing Fire

Via the NY Times:

The Ceasefire Project, a research initiative that tracked outcomes of 2,202 cease-fires from 1989 to 2020, found that 68 percent of those were never formally written down. Its data showed that failed cease-fires typically last from 65 to 193 days and that humanitarian cease-fires have historically been “the most likely to be followed quickly by renewed violence.” Most peace processes require at least three cease-fires along the way.

Outsiders calling for a cease-fire in Ukraine always struck me as a little odd, since both sides think the other side would just use the pause to re-arm. I appreciates this:

“People tend to reach for cease-fires when they do not know what else to do,” said Valerie Sticher, a senior researcher at ETH Zurich.