> In the truck he tells me: "No one is fighting war this way - they are learning from us. This will be the future war."
Must feel horrible to be a laboratory for richer countries newest war tech.
Also, there's an incentive for richer powers outside of the conflict to extend the conflict, to allow for more "research". Unclear if this is actually the case, but it is present.
It sucks very slightly less if you're being given support from wealthier countries.
It would be even better if those countries would let you use them to really tear up your invader -- not just their invading forces, but striking their homeland. But when those countries are fearful of that escalating, you take what you can get.
Is anyone across the end game for Ukraine? Like is it just keep going under there's no more Ukrainians, or Ukraine is a pile of rubble, or Putin has a stroke, or the like?
The US seems to be trying for "Ukraine pushes the russians out, but not so hard that Russia collapses (because a collapse of a nuclear-armed state is a bit of an existential risk)", which may or may not be possible.
There seem to be some sort of political deadlock and any talk about diplomacy seem to be labeled as treason or being a tool for Mr. P.
I guess trench warfare has this 'just one more glorious offensive' lure.
And I never though war would be so glorified like the one in Ukraine. But then again I didn't think liberals would cheer closing the border for men and throwing them into trenches, arming far right militias, banning media and opposition parties either. Lets call it a wakeup call...
I feel like a lot of wars are like that, letting bullets fly until one side is out of bullets or bodies to absorb those bullets. Russia might also run out of bodies, Putin was already offering money to Syrians; or the sanctions might finally work and their economy goes down. But India and China are still buying their oil, China might probably even be their sugar daddy and provide Russia with loans. Ironic when Putin said he started the war to make sure NATO stays away and not conquer Russia, but it ends up with Russia a vassal state of Beijing.
The end game is to re-conquer the politically sensitive Crimea. When they've done that, they tell Putin that they're ready to let him keep some of eastern Ukraine if he withdraws his forces from everywhere else.
"Some" could be "none", depending on their evaluation of the situation at the time. In the maximal case, they take back all of their conquered territory.
Whether Putin will accept that is anybody's guess. It is entirely possible he will reject it and continue to fight to the last Russian male and/or his stroke.
The assumption the lancet won't attack them because of price ignores the lack of concern to price in war. They may feel like a low value asset, but I am less sure the Drone aside from AI models of tank == good car == bad has a value asset measurement. Remember, shooting up Rommels car driving in France accounted for his inability to operate during post D-Day fighting in part, so an asset like a car can be valuable in ways the drone cannot tell.
If I can tell a car has anti-drone RF noise creators maybe its a high value asset?
Allies and Axis alike learned that active RF was a signal to target as much as a mechanism to find objects targetting you, and (wrong words?) antenna resonance is a thing: your passive RF collector can be an RF emitter as well.
I wanted to understand what you wrote better so I rewrote it:
You can't be sure that a lancet won't attack you just by the economics alone. Just because the price of a drone exceeds the price of its target doesn't mean there won't sometimes be expensive drones attacking cheap targets.
Maybe drones can improve their cost-efficiency by targeting stuff that has RF emissions.
Your writing reminds me of how I write when I have taken too much Vyvanse, I don't mean it in an offensive way but I'm kind of curious if you take stimulants.
Yes, several times. And I've been compared to GPT before as well. Odd that the people who propose this don't think "hmm.. maybe the GPT detector is bullshit" but that's gell-mann effect for you.
Must feel horrible to be a laboratory for richer countries newest war tech.
Also, there's an incentive for richer powers outside of the conflict to extend the conflict, to allow for more "research". Unclear if this is actually the case, but it is present.