I’ve been watching a bunch of these videos where they war game realistic and pretty far fetched battle scenarios https://youtube.com/@grimreapers?si=lvRNWBee9RfnkxBI. They’ll cover stuff like a Chinese carrier group vs a US carrier group using slightly futuristic weapons. What often decides the outcomes of battles are the accuracy of ships’ air defenses and how many missiles they have onboard.
Shooting down supersonic, hypersonic, and stealth missiles is hard. You may need to fire multiple anti-air missile just to hit one attacking anti-ship missile. But doing so depletes your magazine faster and it can just come down to who has more ammo.
If you’re able to fire a couple anti-air missiles, and then recover the ones that miss, or have them loiter and acquire a new target, I could see that as being an advantage.
> What often decides the outcomes of battles are the accuracy of ships’ air defenses and how many missiles they have onboard.
I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?
They (at least the war games that are public) always assume at least one or both sides are near 100% competent with their systems.
The Ukraine war has at least showed that that is not the case, the best example perhaps being the sinking of the Moskva, or the multitude of times Ukraine has managed to pierce Russian air defenses (who, mind you, has the most AD of anyone).
I'm pretty certain that a lot of these war game scenarios, of played out in real life, wouldn't play out the same way. There'd be miscommunication, technical issues with equipment, massive total surprise on both sides and so forth.
I don't think war games are meant to actually predict outcomes (even if media etc often wanna draw those conclusions). Rather it is to create scenarios to plan for and then it makes sense to ask "if the chinese act perfect when it comes to their systems and doctrine, how do we counter that?". If you can respond to someone acting perfectly you can probably also respond to someone with less skills.
Also to practice the response, you have people with roles that are extremely hard to practice because they involve mass-coordination that rarely happens in reality but you still want them to have some prior competence at. The goal is often to make their simulated experience ‘realistic’ even if the model is fraying at the edges. All models are wrong but some are useful and all that.
> I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?
The YouTube ones? No they’re entertainment. They talk a lot about the limitations of the software they use. For example, they say simulated hypersonic missile are likely much less accurate than they are in the game. But I think there’s plenty to glean from them.
Many attempted attacks always succeed over many defensive moves in the end. So the OP strategy is to have abblative proxxys capable of rolling the sisyphos dice up the bell curve.
I bet the operators on the front lines are pretty much 100% competent with their systems. But the people at the top are not necessarily competent with their tactics. And how could they be? The weapons systems on both sides change every war. e.g. nobody predicted how the war in Ukraine would turn out.
> I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?
> They (at least the war games that are public) always assume at least one or both sides are near 100% competent with their systems.
Uhhh... that's not a wargame.
A wargame is when you send actual commanders into the actual field, with their actual troops, and roleplay a scenario.
Yeah, there's walkie talkies that go back to HQ where the top-level generals are rolling dice saying "That unit, you got shot, pretend you're dead", and such, but war-games are a scenario to test your generals, admirals, and chain of command. And often times, require physical movement of the lowest level troops.
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But at a minimum, you're testing the commander's reaction times in these scenarios.
I presume that when its a big "X loses in Wargame!!!" stories that go around the press... they're at least choosing the expensive wargames, as you'd put it.
Like, I know that F22 fighters actually flew and were being tested vs RADAR systems in a recent wargame. Obviously no one shot anyone, but its not exactly cheap to run this equipment.
Still, its good roleplay / practice for the pilot (and their commanders and crew), so its absolutely worthwhile. Even if the whole wargame ends up being an unrealistic piece of crap, its still worth excersizing / practicing / drilling the fundamentals
Lasers are, unfortunately, still a planned weapon. And they have some un-correctable problems, for example they don't work in a fog, and their maximum effective range is very small. Carrier strike groups rely entirely on Aegis for defence against a peer opponent. While Aegis is a beast (seriously, it's amazing, it can even destroy satellites in LEO) you have to expect some carriers will be sunk.
Lasers will be very good for VSHORAD, like in Israel or for point defences of objects like embassies or bases in questionable places (CRAM - Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar).
So the emergency services use-cases seem obvious and straightforward, but rare. Can't be that big of a market for that, at least for repeat customers. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd figure that those emergency services organizations would buy 2-3 and keep one in the field and the balance in inventory.
The armed HE variant, that one does not seem that straightforward to me because I don't quite see how this is better than a small missile. Is the benefit loitering? Because a larger drone can carry several armed payloads, and loiter for much longer. Is the benefit detection? Maybe that's it, given its size. Is the benefit autonomous deployment? That probably is pretty useful. Very curious who the government customer is (JSOC?).
Anyway, very cool and slick looking engineering.
Edit: Luckey with some additional comments[1]. "[I]ncreases the operator’s engagement decision space" is I think maybe the key thing here, now that I think about it. The battlefield today is saturated with sensors, so giving the operator just an extra bit of time to understand the data probably is a key innovation for drone warfare.
>Roadrunner-M's performance capacity is far superior than competing air defense solutions and is already an overmatch capability against current and emerging threats. Its employment methodology significantly increases the operator’s engagement decision space which is critically constrained with current capabilities.
>Roadrunner-M innovations include faster launch and take-off timing, three times the warhead payload capacity, ten times the one way effective range, and is three times more maneuverable in G force, compared to similar offerings on the market. A single operator can launch and supervise multiple Roadrunner or Roadrunner-M squadrons.
>Roadrunner-M can be controlled by Lattice, Anduril’s AI-powered software suite for command and control, or be fully integrated into existing air defense radars, sensors, and architectures to provide immediately deployable capability."
Can it self-relaunch though? I wonder because it jettisons a lot of junk coming out of its box, VTOL landing is going to be expensive in fuel costs and it deploys some landing gear which would need to be retractable.
It’s also subsonic, loud and quite large so isn’t going to be particularly stealthy.
My bet would be something more akin to a small missile you can launch speculatively with more range and capability than you see with modified drones in Ukraine that can be landed in your lines and repacked if not actually used.
It looks to be launched from the 'nest' by spring/air using the sabot because it leaves so quickly. No way a jet could accelerate it that quickly on its own.
That doesn't mean it's incapable of taking off on its own vertically though.
I think the armed variants advantage is that you can launch 5 and call the rest back once you get a hit on the target.
Shooting down modern/future hypersonic or stealth missiles is hard and there is no guarantee you will take it down with just one. So this way you can recover the rest once you get a hit.
It’s not going to intercept a hypersonic missile, and I doubt it can reliably intercept a supersonic missile. Subsonic stealthy targets it should have a chance against, since its seeker is EO/IR based, not radar.
I think the primary use for the armed variant will be anti-drone, with decent capability against subsonic manned platforms. That said, it would probably also work well against unarmored ground targets…
Although then you need something something both fast, and refuelable, and recoverable. So... bigger, heavier, etc. And recovered and refuled in combat. Not necessarily impossible but much more complicated.
as for air defence it's a new paradigm in that you just launch ALL the air defence. Once the threat is eliminated you get them back.
if you launch all of a patriot it's a decent reload time.
It changes the cost/benefit of firing to save a target Vs saving for a more valued save later. quite a big deal with cheaper swam strategies planned.
you still have to reload these but landing repack + fuel is pretty easy.
The fact that it can land if it doesn't explode seems like a big deal. Launch a bunch at a target, first one gets blown up, rest return to base for later use.
make several at less cost because no return hardware, reduced weight or increased range, make it up in volume. Also this can break on re-use, less chance to be faulty with a factory checked item in a box
For a single engagement your logic is sound. But for a prolonged war logistics is extremely challenging. Wars have been won and lost based on who is better at bringing fuel, supplies and ammunition to the battlefield.
If you can reduce volume and weight of missile shipments with these things that might be incredibly valuable, even if it's more expensive overall
Production cost is just one cost. Often the logistics of bringing a lot of stuff to the point of contact is much more challenging. Then it can be a very useful if you don't have to "waste" all ordnance if it misses.
> The armed HE variant, that one does not seem that straightforward to me because I don't quite see how this is better than a small missile. Is the benefit loitering? Because a larger drone can carry several armed payloads, and loiter for much longer. Is the benefit detection? Maybe that's it, given its size. Is the benefit autonomous deployment? That probably is pretty useful. Very curious who the government customer is (JSOC?).
I think the value compounding can come when these are used as a swarm or as part of multi strategy defense / offense system.
It's not that great. I would know, I work there. The marketing is the shit though. It makes all the tech look like it's the greatest thing ever. The mentality here at this company is hack hack hack and the quality of the product reflect this. Don't expect German engineered precision. Expect products with poor quality, poor reliability and a failure rate that is very very high.
What is good about this company is that we build things fast and there's not of lot of slacking going on that you see in most of the defense industry. We make things fast and cheap, but they're very poor quality.
To give one example take a look at our counter UAS:
Watch the video it will give you chills. What the video won't show is how ineffective this product is. The enemy sends one drone, maybe it will work. If the enemy sends 3 or 4 we're done. This shit barely works, I wouldn't trust my life with it at all. All tests and demonstrations showed utter failure and STILL even though we failed on all the tests we STILL got a contract from the government. There's for sure money changing hands behind the scenes.
It also doesn't show you how crappy the UI is. You think we have a custom UI device to control this thing? No. It's react running in chrome on windows. It's also really poorly designed. The initial UI was made by some kid straight out of school and it was just poorly optimized. And despite this... The government still bought it, simply because a crap product is the only available option.
And to be real with you, we can't beat China tech. In terms of the quality, price and speed ratio, China dominates anduril by a landslide. The US can dominate on quality, but we we give up speed and price as a result. And if you want quality, anduril is not at the forefront of this at all.
You can speak for your own department. Some of us are shipping products and know what we're doing.
It's insane to think it would make sense to build on anything other than the best existing commercial technology and expect it to be reliable, affordable and maintainable. The military would not and should not change everything from Windows/Linux and Chrome to some completely custom OS and UI. (In the places we do provide products with the latter, we are more than state-of-the-art.)
Avionics have been piggybacking off of commercial electronics due to the sheer scale since at least the 1980's because it just makes sense, while the primes have been slow to do the same in software, partly due to mindsets like yours.
And the fact is, when creating software, everything starts out buggy, because nothing exists. That's why you develop, test and fix it. Normally we of course wouldn't ship anything that's not perfect, but our customers have begged us for products, saying they have nothing that can deal with some of the threats they face and so are okay with having to restart an app every now and then until it's ironed out.
Plus, if you can see through Anduril's marketing, how can you not see through China's marketing?
That's for internal use. For military customer use, usually it's expected that the UI be similar to a UI you get in an air plane cockpit. What happens when you go fly a passenger plane and you see chrome with some front end UI? Come on man.
Anyway, a front end UI can still work even though it's not ideal, but there's huge performance issues with what we have. Huge. The thing doesn't even run webgl for rendering, it's layering svgs on top of mapbox and those svgs are redrawn every frame with no caching. It's poorly designed and clunky and slow and buggy.
SpaceX does use web-based UI's on the capsule. But we're not shipping UI's for passenger planes. And the guys using our products really don't care about whether or not the UI is caching some element. They care that they can perform maintenance, updates and C2 with their tablet in the field rather than air freight some magic 200lb box with a dozen custom cannon connectors from rural Connecticut.
I mean, obviously. Anduril is one company, and still a relatively small company at that.
> And if you want quality, anduril is not at the forefront of this at all.
The US, as you mention, already has quality. We need speed and things that are "good enough" right now, not quality. Anduril seems to be heading pretty good in that direction.
They are heading in that direction slowly. Overall the products are pretty unreliable Probably two decades before it gets really good and by then there'll be so much red tape the company will have lost all the speed they have now. I can assure you our products are nowhere near good enough as of right now.
That's why there isn't a single video of a live demonstration against enemies. It's not that good. Palmer "suggested" our stuff is being used in Ukraine but how come I see tons of videos cheap drones operating in Ukraine and no anduril products? Because cheap drones are > then anything anduril has built.
>I mean, obviously. Anduril is one company, and still a relatively small company at that.
I meant that the average company in China operating in the same space can beat out anduril. Take DJI for example. Not even primarily a military company, their products BETTER than ours in the field of battle. There products were so effective in Ukraine that DJI had to write safe guards to prevent usage. Anduril can't hold a candle to this.
If you're convinced about the things you're talking about (and acting out like this) then you should just go to another company. I have seen the videos you say you haven't, and they aren't shared because of operational security. (They're also grainy and low-res so have little marketing value.)
The war of the machines will look more like the Bhopal disaster, and less like a war.
Of course, maybe we're already post-singularity. My memory of the before-times is pretty hazy and confused. "Reality" seems more and more like a camp Paul Verhoeven satire of reality.
It feels like someone copied this company verbatim out of a cyberpunk world and pasted it in our world. Everything is cyberpunk, down to the name, logo, design style and products.
Personally, as someone who likes Anduril and isn't much a fan of Palantir, I never had issue with the people. I had issue with what they were doing. If Anduril was selling primarily to law enforcement/border control/spying like Palantir does then I'd like them less. Also the imagery even in the name is indicative. Anduril is a sword. Palantir is an all-seeing oracle of knowledge. The latter is a lot more dangerous for domestic politics than the former. There's a lot of people who support the US military but don't support the likes of the CIA or the NSA.
Aesthetics turns out to be pretty powerful even for things like war. This must really attract gamer engineers.
There was once certain army that used clothes by Hugo Boss that also looked super cool and i am sure many people loved how they looked in them.
Isn't this a bit different? Like anyone can get whatever brand. But its very different when company willingly creates and produces designs for skull army.
It would be more impressive if it landed back to the nest, which is something we achieved last year in a PoC. That being said, I don’t see any technical specs.. the problem (or advantage however you see it) with drones, is the easy access plus the effectiveness in the “defense” aspect, so that fancy looking drone is useful against fighter jets for example (and definitely cheaper), but you can imagine someone with $200 fpv suicide drone immediately hitting the nest before it even launches, so your drone got droned, and by a cheaper one, with the ability to send a swarm of them launched from some house’s balcony.
I've never heard of a defense sector startup in Europe
In the US its quite common. A huge percentage of defense spending is specifically restricted to small businesses and big projects have percentages that must be subcontracted to small subcontractors. And then there is the whole SBIR program too. So anything R&D-ish goes there. It's a giant subsidy program for white christian enginners (bc you need clearance)
I say subsidy bc they have a near zero chance of actually supplying the military. You're extremely lucky to ever get a Phase II. The big players ensure none of the small businesses actually ever get big
Anecdotally it's Mormons that are supposedly over represented in the TLA's:
in reality, Mormons end up in these agencies for perfectly logical reasons. The disproportionate number of Mormons is usually chalked up to three factors: Mormon people often have strong foreign language skills, from missions overseas; a relatively easy time getting security clearances, given their abstention from drugs and alcohol; and a willingness to serve.
In hard numbers it's difficult to verify, besides being closely guarded intelligence agencies they're Federal and don't publish breakdowns of employment by religion, etc.
Military R&D tends to be broader minded in the sense they need hard skillsets and will take anyone with citizenship, a verifiable background, and the technical chops .. and even go wider if pressed for bodies.
I want missile trucks. That launch from submarines. Can carry AMRAAM, SLAM, JSOW, etc. Can land in the water and be recovered by the submarine and launched for more missile truck missions. I’d war-game this against super duper expensive jets, carriers, etc. Maybe even the subs can be autonomous and run off AI.
ATM the biggest problem for LRAD is cost, you fire a $12K Patriot missile to intercept what is either a $40 million jet or a $300 drone. This is revolutionary.
Directed energy (laser) will solve this issue, so that Patriots are only engaged for expensive planes, while lasers will destroy drones and cheap ballistic rockets
No, lasers will not be a sufficient defense against ballistic missiles. Lasers require time to burn through the target. With ballistic missiles, they're facing a target traveling 5+ times the speed of sound (ie. little time), that also has heat shielding on the bit that's facing the target. Not to mention adverse weather conditions. And missiles w
Lasers will, however, be very effective at SHORAD, especially against cheap drones, rockets, artillery shells and cruise missiles, in the proper conditions. Iron Beam is projected to cost $0.50-$1.00 in electricity per shot, compared to a $50-60k Iron Dome interceptor missile (which is already insanely cheap for what it is).
They will not solve this issue because laser weapons will not work when light is defracted (fog, heavy clouds, rain), and they will not work against targets beyond the horizon. It's not a technology hurdle, it's a physics impossibility.
Interceptor missiles are here to stay. Lasers will accompany them but never replace.
You can (in theory) guide an air-to-air missile in at that range remotely using an optical targeting pod on the launching fighter, it's generally more risky though because you can't immediately break contact like you can with a Meteor for example. Meteor is highly resistant to ECM however, and a remote guided missile might not be. In all cases however, any laser system you can power on a fighter jet (assuming current and near future technology) will not be able to target a manned or unmanned fighter jet in a way that a remote guided missile system can't. A laser system could be useful for close range defense.
Gepard is a specialized anti-air vehicle with a radar and pretty expensive shells. Very effective and cheaper than Patriot/NASAMS/IRIS-T missiles, but not really cheap. It’s mainly used on the outskirts of big cities, AFAIK.
When intercepting drones and rockets in a middle of nowhere, what’s often used is a regular machine gun that’s mounted on a pickup truck.
The better AA autocanon shells actually have a timed airburst fuze (set at firing time!) so only small fragments should be raining down (for non-dud shells).
Especially when it comes to smuggling drugs across the border.
Of course, we could fix the drug smuggling by decriminalizing drug addiction and treating it like other public health issues. But the "War on Drugs" still rages on, after decades of failure.
I've watched more than a few videos of jet-powered RC aircraft, and they are scary fast. So it shouldn't be a surprise for the performance of a craft like this.
We often hear about "secret" aircraft, chosen to be secret by the govt to not disclose capabilities to potential enemies. However this is clearly disclosing capabilities. Is it just because it's a private company, wouldn't part of their contract with the govt. to keep their new weapons a secret?
..."and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats"...
Okay, but what/who is the root problem that created this company to solve this issue? The either real or perceived threats that the United States and its media affiliations have concocted has really put a tamper on its own ability to make policy decisions that benefit its own peoples. We are spending BILLIONS of dollars on wars in other countries WHILE neglecting our own. Why do we need another private company help with this?
Another question for a separate answer: why can't we spend that money on domestic issues?
Seemed pretty clear to me. Drones are a dime a dozen. Drone defense is disproportionately costly. This product's goal is to protect from drone attacks without wasting a bunch of million-dollar missiles.
Regardless of one's feelings on the military-industrial complex, the use case seems relatively straightforward.
We are already spending money on this type of problem. Realistically, this looks like a more cost-effective solution. So you have it completely backwards – this being a thing might actually unlock more funds for domestic issues.
Of course it probably won't work out this way because the DoD doesn't just say "We bought a bunch of Anduril Roadrunner's instead of $4m Patriot missiles [or whatever] this year, so we don't need as much budget, take some back".
But a company trying to come up with new solutions to existing problems (you might disagree they are real problems, but we are already spending the money regardless), is actually a good thing.
Just look at SpaceX – before SpaceX, NASA had the ability to send stuff to space. But post-SpaceX, they can send more payloads at a cheaper cost. Isn't that better?
> Just look at SpaceX – before SpaceX, NASA had the ability to send stuff to space. But post-SpaceX, they can send more payloads at a cheaper cost. Isn't that better?
They're now at the whim of an exceedingly eccentric billionaire for their space flight stuff. If Musk one day says he doesn't want to put up satellites that can be used to threaten Russia, NASA can't do anything about it, at least immediately (as they can't just rebuild their payload to fit into ULA rockets). We've already seen that play out with Starlink.
The world pre-SpaceX wasn't good either as NASA was mostly (ab)used by Congress to distribute pork, but now I think the pendulum has swung to the other side way too far - now Congress has zero control short of emergency nationalization over SpaceX.
Before NASA started using SpaceX they basically didn't have launch capacity. They were sending astronauts to the ISS on Soyuz rockets. A private US company being the best available launch provider is an improvement on the previous status quo.
Beyond that, there are now many, many other private endeavors working to add launch capacity, many of which exist thanks to SpaceX.
Before this literally congress had to beg the Russians for space engines. And we were at the whim of a nation state that we are enemies with. I’ll take free market capitalism any day.
A reasonable guess is that this is in response to the proliferation of group 3 UAS in the Ukraine conflict [0]. Personally, I am all for the US producing robotic systems designed to kill robotic systems that are designed to kill humans.
I mean, like B-2 standing on one wingtip. Like a giant vertical stabilizer. Takeoff with downward reverse thrust, roll and switch to rear-facing exhaust to fly, roll back into knife-edge flight on approach. Velocity vector movement could look less scary than with tail-sitters if works.
It performs the same job as a sam or aa gun, at a much increased price I would bet. And why is there a need to return to base? Then it needs to be refueled. You can also see when launched it sheds some covering, so returning to base does not mean it is operational again, it needs to be reset.
And that is in general the problem with US armament systems these days. Very impressive but way too expensive.
It's more about budget and eye, though. A skilled CG industry veteran with no time or $$$ budget and a deep immersion in in say r/combatfootage and physics could probably make something that would pass for real. It's just that all of those talents and circumstances don't really come together. Hmmm.
The detachment mechanism adds significant complexity, weight and costs.
And the result is much less accurate, and the warhead is smaller. Instead of actively flying the warhead as close to the target as possible, the drone now needs to calculate the optimal detachment point and hope the warhead ends up at the right place for an intercept. This detachment point needs to be at least several seconds before intercept to give the drone enough time to get out of the blast radius, so if the target is actively evading, any hope of hitting it is basically zero.
As long as the drone is cheap enough, this is the superior solution for the widest range of viable targets.
Maybe if you are going up against lots of really simple drones with zero evasion capabilities and no armour, it might make sense to to even simpler and swap the warhead module out for a what is essentially a large single-shot shotgun, but that's going to have significantly less power.
My understanding is that you have an defensive area with ~20 of the hangers scattered around.
1. !!Incoming threat!!
2. LAUNCH ALL THE DRONES,
3. One intercepts,
4. Other loiter a while in case of additional threats,
5. Remaining drones return to base.
Get the operational advantage of having many vehicles in the air, all controllable by one operator, but you recover those not used.
I guess this is the best scenario for this as far as I can tell, but as another commenter mentioned, how is this better than standard small missiles such as a normal "Iron Dome" style system?
Having them "in the air" waiting doesn't seem to be that big of a help when your missile launcher can have the rocket in the air about as fast after an intercept command is issued. And small missiles are and will continue to get cheaper.
Maybe the price calculation gets better for guaranteeing an intercept? Since either you assume Drone/Missile #1 is going to hit or you fire more just in case that first one misses, because waiting to see if you have a hit before firing another is not an option, and given enough delay and fast communication you could have the second drone abort and fly back after a confirmed intercept.
further you'd want to inspect them all after recovery, fix breakages, and refuel them. or as you say, just sabot one out into the sky and have it chase or die.
Either I'm reading too much into it, or Anduril might be having troubles making and operating weapons at its own discretion. It might be regulatorily easier to install small explosives on an otherwise inert drone than simply buying and inserting a time fused Hydra rocket onto an Anduril-made tube.
What I've read says that this is a modular system, likely some variants will launch small air to air missles, and others use large shotgun shells to take out drones.
This really isn’t to sell any Roadrunners. Anduril has surely been talking to the right program offices and relevant government entities for some time now.
This is more to establish the company’s general credibility & draw in new talent.
That's a bold assumption. Anduril is still fighting to get a foothold in DoD the procurement processes which is dominated by the big players (LM, Boeing, Raytheon). Never under-estimate how byzantine that process is.
Tbh this could be to convince people within the DoD to stop blanket rejecting their bids just because they are new and unfamiliar.
How else do you propose we stop russian soldiers from raping, torturing, and murdering in Ukraine?
If you have better ideas, please do let us know. The friends I have on the front line would certainly prefer to be at home with their families over Christmas rather than sitting in a trench, staving off frostbite and bullets.
> And for Ukraine, you can tell your friends it was nice knowing them. Russia is rapidly modernizing, gaining valuable experience, and outscaling NATO in ammunition production.
I see you read Russia Today and swallow, then repeat propaganda. The Russian military is toast...no one fears them anymore. If not for nuclear weapons, NATO would have brought down the Putin regime to dust.
The whole defense industry leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Once you peel the narrative that we are supposed to be the good guys (hint: in some/most cases, we are not), you realize that you really just help to kill people.
You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that humanity is not an intrinsically violent species, and that if we all held hands and sang Kumbaya we'd be able to get along peaceably and without need for defensive tools.
Or you can wake up to the reality that a strong defensive, and sometimes offensive capability is required in order to enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted, and be part of the process of keeping all the sheeps safe.
The sheepdog is a scary beast. It growls, it bites, and it intimidates sheep and wolf alike. But the herd is better off with it than without.
> enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted
The majority of the worlds population do not take peace for granted. The question is, to what extend has US hegemony extended war and violence, and to what extent has it depleted it (compared to the available alternatives). Clearly enormous loss of life has occurred in places like Latin America, Iran, South East Asia Cuba etc due to US led toppling of democratic leaders and installation of often brutal dictators. But the overall balance of suffering is difficult if not impossible to calculate. Is Pax Americana a net good? Hard to say. But we can trivially reject the jingoistic 'a few good men' narrative of brutes manning the barricades of peace.
Regardless of any “Pax Americana”, nuclear weapons have been the greatest force for peace in history.
Before them, we had two devastating world wars in the span of about three decades, with over 100,000,000 dead total. Now we’ve gone over seven decades without another.
Let’s hope the deterrent holds through the current, ongoing, and horribly irresponsible brinksmanship.
That loss of life is not enormous if you look at the overall graph of civilian and military war-related deaths throughout 20th and 21st century. It very obviously trended downwards, especially after the Cold War, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine which caused a spike. Then again, communism resulted in millions more civilian deaths in the same time period. The US impact on the worldwide death toll is often overstated for some reason, it's as if people are entirely unaware of events like Holodomor and The Great Leap Forward.
> US impact on the worldwide death toll is often overstated for some reason
It is only perceived as overstated when the second-order effects of its actions are dropped from the count; the actions of the dictatorships backed and installed by the US never seem to make the tally. Kissinger’s (topical) Chinese containment strategy alone is responsible for as many deaths as the Holodomor. See accounts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, Korea.
Should proxies, direct actions by those one supports, etc. not count? Who knows, but that always seems to divorce foreign policy decisions from their consequences when we do.
Well, if you start taking into account the second-order socioeconomic effects of shooting millions of people who could have led productive lives and could have had children, or the effects of putting millions more through the Gulag system... I get the point, however I suppose the full extent of the tragedy of communism is just way too depressing to really think about compared to thinking about the US' global influence, especially now when similar ideas in Moscow led to another goddamn war. The existence of communism and its history poses a strong moral dilemma, either let it spread and watch the inevitable ensuing devastation, or intervene, but with a chance of your actions backfiring and, formally speaking, "causing" something bad. It's an open question which choice would have been better in which situation, and I don't think it's productive to just look at mistakes while ignoring the overall intent. How do you even count how many lives the US foreign policy managed to save?
Same goes with other nations, it sounds nice from your perspective but not so much when others do it too, you think you’re enforcing “peace” but reality is completely different, for that reason MIC exists and thrive for these “peaceful” wars, that we all know they are far from being peaceful. Sure, it’s naive to think that everyone will halt offensive/defensive work, but trying to justify it that it’s to protect the “herd” and bring “peace” is far more naive, there are no wolves, it’s another dogs and other herd too, it’s always about dominance and power struggles.
Anyone can come up with a list of mistakes made by any major actor in any sphere you care to name. OK, sure, people and even countries make big, dumb mistakes sometimes.
That doesn't prove anything other than humans remain human. I'm no blind supporter of Uncle Sam but things are just a little bit more complicated than your comment seems to suggest.
The US army has helped stop the russians from killing me and my friends in Ukraine.
The russians launch missiles and drones at civilians, like me.
Last October, I was sitting at my kitchen table, writing Haskell and working on my startup, when outside my kitchen window the local air defence successfully blasted a Shahed 136 out of the air. Both the missile trail and the cloud from the explosion hung in the air for several minutes. I have a good photo of it.
The air defence doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s extremely loud, even when we’re sitting in the underground shelter during an air raid. Sometimes people die. So far it’s mostly been women and children.
I might have misinterpreted your comment, but “it made the sheep less safe” seems both wildly inaccurate and offensive. And to characterise it as the sponsoring of “Banderites”, well, I’d ask you which department of the kremlin you work for.
You can't attack another user like this here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid posting in the flamewar style.
I'm going to post the same reply to the users breaking the site guidelines on the opposite side of this fight. We don't want this kind of battle here, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly.
FYI as it was a little obscure, “sheep” and “sheepdogs” is a reference to a quite famous article by USMC LTC Dave Grossman, author of a widely read book “On Killing”:
It is not meant as a disparaging remark in this context to call people sheep.
ChatGPT's summary: Dave Grossman explores the concept of three distinct types of people in society: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. He characterizes "sheep" as the general populace, who are peaceful and vulnerable; "wolves" as those who prey on the sheep, representing criminals and threats to society; and "sheepdogs" as individuals who protect the sheep, often law enforcement and military personnel. Grossman emphasizes the importance of recognizing and supporting the sheepdogs who keep society safe, and he encourages readers to understand the roles these groups play in maintaining a secure and orderly society.
My own note: to the sheep the wolves and the sheepdogs can often seem the same. They both have scary fangs, make growling noises, chase and bite, etc. It is common for the sheep to fear both wolves and the sheepdogs. Some sheep fail to distinguish the two, and if sheep wrote political essays they might call for defunding the sheepdogs as they are a menace to society. But wolves and sheepdogs are not the same, and it is a mistake to equate defensive investment in military capabilities to keep the peace (even if that sometimes involves military interventions and/or small-scale preemptive wars) with hostile, aggressive conquest of the sort we see carried out by actors like Russia, or the genocide conducted by Hamas.
I appreciate the clarification, but I should also clarify that it's not the use of the word "sheep" which I find offensive or inaccurate. Instead, it's the idea that Ukraine is full of Nazis (which is implied by the constant use of "Banderites"), and the idea that civilians in Ukraine are somehow less safe with a military force to protect them.
The reason why Ukraine still exists today is because Ukrainian soldiers managed to kill so many russian invaders and destroy so much russian armour in the first couple of months of the war. This is largely thanks to Western ordnance.
You can't attack another user like this here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid posting in the flamewar style.
I'm going to post the same reply to the users breaking the site guidelines on the opposite side of this fight. We don't want this kind of battle here, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly.
You can't attack another user like this here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid posting in the flamewar style.
I'm going to post the same reply to the users breaking the site guidelines on the opposite side of this fight. We don't want this kind of battle here, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly.
A discussion about the involvement of NATO is fair game, but "Ukraine bombing the Donbas" is a 100% Russian propaganda lie. I own my own platform, and such a statement would be an instant ban of that account.
I'm all for free speech, but like I showed, Russian propaganda poses a real threat for us here in the EU.
So in my defense, "Russian mouthpiece" was a factual statement ;), but I understand it's also a personal attack.
You can't attack another user like this here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid posting in the flamewar style.
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A smaller nation adopting the old symbols of what their current attackers deem the greatest threat to their existence that they had ever faced, seems like a surprisingly hard concept to understand. People should really read more biology, defenseless species of animals adopting the bold and provocative colors of another, poisonous species, that look somewhat like them, is not an unheard of form of mimicry.
Russia invaded Ukraine for the same reason it started a war with Chechenia and Georgia. Let me tell you: it has absolute zero to do with NATO. NATO however, has everything to do with Russia constantly trying to invade their neighbours.
Besides, NATO is already at their doorstep with Finland. Did it change anything?
And how can you negotiate with a country like Russia? Peace deal now is an invasion in 5 years.
To be fair, in hindsight I can see why Russia felt threatened by NATO after Ukraine jumped from its lap feb 2014. But framing the Maidan events as some sort of US sponsored Nazi coup seems a bit of a tangent.
Putin felt threatened because he couldn't understand how his puppet was ousted, as he doesn't believe in the concept of grassroots political opposition or the existence of the Internet, and came to the irrational conclusion that it must have been Americans. Yet another proof that out of touch old men in power bring ruin to their people.
No, it isn’t. If it was, they wouldn’t be moving ordnance and personnel from Kaliningrad and their borders with Finland to Ukraine to bolster their invasion.
My previous assessment hasn’t changed. You are either blissfully ignorant of the reality of the war in Ukraine and russia’s aims, or you are deliberately spreading misinformation here.
I think your previous assessment is right. I asked my initial question because it's not typical for someone to use the word Banderite. Combined with an account creation in Jan. 2022 and a history of comments like this. Well, it's strange.
Is Anduril(and by extension Palantir...?) Russia connected? The -M suffix used in the weaponized version is reminiscent of Russian nomenclature("Modified" or "Modernized" in Russian spelling).
We’re currently at the start of WW3, as NATO vs BRICS escalates.
The waste of the US military in Iraq, the defeat in Afghanistan, the failures of domestic spying and PSYOPs dividing the nation, and the failed war in Ukraine has precipitated a state of weakness where rival countries are jockeying for position in both the Middle East and SE Asia. China is openly waging irregular warfare against the US, killing 100,000+ Americans per year in the Second Opium War. Our borders are regularly not only breached by Mexican paramilitaries, but the invasion assisted by DOD flights.
The failure of the “sheepdog” to keep the herd safe is happening right now.
Edit:
If you disagree with my conclusion —
I explained why I thought that in my post, so please explain either where you thought I was wrong or what you know that I don’t.
Rather than trot out the very tired “muh conspiracy theories!”
> We're currently at the start of WW3, as NATO vs BRICS escalates.
And yet before the end of December you'll likely see the USAF working with Brazilian armed forces in Guyana against Maduro's invasion, and now the B of BRICS is out of the equation.
You should stop reading Russian propaganda as if it was news…
I think you need to re-evaluate your sources of information, because what you wrote in this comment comes across as a bunch of unfounded, conspiracy-addled fantasy world nonsense.
Not only is "NATO vs BRICS" not escalating, there is no "NATO vs BRICS". What are you even on about.
Ukraine is a sovereign democratic state. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and a full scale invasion in 2022.
Is it surprising to you that Ukraine wants closer ties with Western Europe the same way Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, etc has done? All these countries were able to prosper. Russia is a shit non-democratic country that wants to go back to the soviet days where everyone under their rule lived in shit.
How you could say this was a "US army sponsored Banderites" with a straight face is just plain retarded. At least US didn't kill millions of Ukrainians, unlike Russia.
In reality, the “sheepdog” ends up being a government surveillance state that keeps you compliant with spending all the money on peacetime military waste, rather than serving any of the citizens.
Ok so tell me: why has the US and its allies been largely free of risk from territorial invasion, for such a long time that people like you feel comfortable lobbying for the elimination of the military? Why didn't Stalin continue his march into Western Europe after defeating Germany?
I get where you are coming from. In the last two decades, the USA and allies have spent trillions of dollars increasing the suffering and death in Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn't even gain much geopolitical advantage in return. A giant waste of time, money, and human life. Had we not invaded them, there might be a million more Iraqis alive today. Afghanistan would still be a failed state though.
The 2014 invasion of Ukraine was not a significant news event for me. Ukraine was weak, and the tepid response to the invasion from Ukraine and the rest of the West meant that Russia just rolled in without opposition or much drama.
Fast forward 8 years, and Ukraine has further developed its national identity and is starting to become a real democracy. The 2022 invasion was a big wake-up call for the West. We had thought that we had won the Cold War in 1992, and that our geopolitical rivals, while still warranting concern, were not a direct threat to us and our allies anymore. Nope! It turns out there is still a need for the USA to be an unrivaled global superpower, and for the rest of NATO to get its ass in gear and modernize.
> Nope! It turns out there is still a need for the USA to be an unrivaled global superpower, and for the rest of NATO to get its ass in gear and modernize.
This doesn’t make sense to me. Russia remains a backwater with a GDP the size of Italy. They are not a significant threat to US interests, any more than Italy could possibly hope to be.
If anything, a strong America just lends a false sense of security to countries like Ukraine, which might be better off understating that they must see to their own safety and security.
Historically speaking, few of America’s international adventures have had a beneficial outcome. Pretending that the world ‘needs’ our meddling is a stretch. We need to be able to defend ourselves and to ramp for war quickly. The rest is pork for the military industrial complex.
Low-cost defensive deployables like Roadrunner and the related subset of military industrial complex pork are what is needed to enable that future of smaller countries seeing to their own defense.
> If anything, a strong America just lends a false sense of security to countries like Ukraine, which might be better off understating that they must see to their own safety and security.
Name a full member of NATO who has been invaded. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Even without NATO membership, China currently isn't occupying Taiwan. Guess why.
> Historically speaking, few of America’s international adventures have had a beneficial outcome. Pretending that the world ‘needs’ our meddling is a stretch. We need to be able to defend ourselves and to ramp for war quickly. The rest is pork for the military industrial complex.
Did you even read the first part of my comment? Do I sound like an apologist for the USA's recent foreign policy?
There is a lot of pork spent for the USA's military. Cost overruns and unnecessary systems abound. That doesn't obviate the need for a strong military to keep the peace for ourselves and our allies.
The world is different now than it was 100 years ago. Many counties have at least a few nuclear weapons. We can't afford to let things spin out of control. We need stability, and NATO provides a lot of that.
Name the last time a NATO country invaded another NATO member. Oh, wait, that never happened, and never will happen. That's called stability.
> This is what got us the Ukraine war in the first place, an uncompromising hard line against a weak Russia because the USA was in the position to do so. Russia opposed each NATO expansion but did nothing in the end and it was the same gamble with Ukraine, hoping that Russia will once more do nothing.
Ah, the classic "The West forced Russia to invade Ukraine. Like the government in Ukraine didn't have any legitimate reason to align itself with the West after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Have you heard the rhetoric coming from Putin and the Kremlin? About how Ukraine doesn't have a legitimate national or ethnic identity of their own, and how the territory of Ukraine should just be a part of Russia. And how the Ukrainians (who are really just Russians, really) don't deserve to self-govern?
Going on right now in occupied Ukraine, the Russians are actively purging all Ukrainian language and culture. Only the Russian language will be taught in schools.
Forced is not true and I did not say that, Russia could also have decided not to invaded. I also did not say that Ukraine has no reasons to want to join NATO, they have and they most likely had them long before 2014.
But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of negotiations, Russia delivered on its promise. The outcome was rather predictable, at least ignoring that Russia did not react as strongly to previous NATO expansions.
We can debate all day long whether NATO should expand, whether Russia should have any say in which alliances Ukraine enters, whether an invasion is a justifiable means, whether Russia would have invaded anyway if NATO would have given up on the expansion, that are all fair questions. My point is just that there was a relatively simple situation, Russia warns NATO, one step closer and there will be war, and NATO decides that it will make that step.
> But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of negotiations, Russia delivered on its promise.
I don't understand what you are talking about. NATO did exactly what you suggest: at the request of Russians, shut the door to NATO for Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used the opportunity and shortly thereafter invaded both of them. Russia has not invaded a single country that actually joined NATO.
Seeking NATO membership is the best strategy to prevent a Russian invasion, hence why Finland and Sweden decided to join. It was a particularly notable policy shift for Sweden, because Sweden abandoned 200 years of neutrality.
NATO did exactly what you suggest: at the request of Russians, shut the door to NATO for Georgia and Ukraine.
Where do you get this interpretation from, honest question. In Bucharest 2008 France and Germany voiced opposition against a NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine. Despite that resistance the declarations of the summit says the following.
We reiterate that decisions on enlargement are for NATO itself to make. [...] NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations.
In December 2021 Russia made a final attempt to get a political resolution of the conflict, sending letters to the US president and NATO demanding an agreement. The response came in January 2022.
What we have made clear is that we will not compromise on some core principles. And one of them is, of course, that every nation has the right to choose its own path. So NATO respects a country or a nation when they decide to apply for NATO membership, as for instance, Ukraine [...]
I don't see how this can be interpreted as abandoning the idea of a NATO membership for Ukraine. It also somewhat misrepresent the process, it is of course in the hands of NATO members to admit new members, a country wanting to join does not mean much on its own.
Also article 10 says that new members must be in a position to contribute to the security in the treaty area. Depending on how one understands that sentence, a NATO membership of Ukraine - or even just its consideration - arguably achieved the exact opposite, at least for the moment.
> Where do you get this interpretation from, honest question. In Bucharest 2008 France and Germany voiced opposition against a NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine. Despite that resistance the declarations of the summit says the following.
These are just nice words for consolation. At the same summit in Bucharest, NATO decided not to offer Ukraine and Georgia a Membership Action Plan, which is the procedure for joining NATO. NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia in any forseeable future was off the table. The prospect was from time to time dangled in front of them to encourage reforms and modernization, but that was it. The prospect of Turkey joining the EU has been of similar nature for many decades with little actual progress.
> Also article 10 says that new members must be in a position to contribute to the security in the treaty area. Depending on how one understands that sentence, a NATO membership of Ukraine - or even just its consideration - arguably achieved the exact opposite, at least for the moment.
That is generally understood as a requirement to maintain a capable fighting force and not to freeride on the backs of others in the alliance (see Article 3; Article 10 establishes the same requirement for new applicants). I don't think any reasonable person would call Ukraine freeriders. At the moment, they are one of the most capable fighting forces in the world, and will no doubt invest heavily in armed forces after the war.
> In December 2021 Russia made a final attempt to get a political resolution of the conflict, sending letters to the US president and NATO demanding an agreement. The response came in January 2022.
Russia demanded that the country I live in should be kicked out of NATO. The last time they made such ultimatums, my government chose to satisfy their demands in an attempt to use all means possible to avoid confrontation. In the end, Russians demanded military bases on our soil as forward posts against possible attacks from Central Europe (Napoleon and all that, 2023 isn't the first time around seeing that narrative). Tens of thousands of soldiers, countless tanks and artillery guns were brought in. Those bases were used as a staging area for taking over our national institutions and installing a puppet government that immediately asked Russians to officially occupy us. Widespread terror against the population followed, including deportation of tens of thousands of women and children in cattle cars to die in Siberian gulags. For half a century that followed, until 1991, they did all they could to suppress our language, culture and identity. They replaced a third of the population in the country with Russians, in an attempt to destroy our identity and merge us into an indistinguishable and unseparatable part of Russia. We were literally becoming a minority in our own country.
But by sheer luck, that Russian empire of shit collapsed due to chronic mismanagement and internal rotting. We were able to restore independence. Sweden helped immensely in getting Russian occupying force to leave in 1994. In a decade, we were able to crawl out of the shithole Russians forced us into, and satisfied all requirements needed to join the EU and NATO. Modern military with civilian oversight, a modern government with separation of powers, rule of law and high level of protection of human rights, high quality of life, some of the highest press freedom, economic freedom and other rankings in the world.
Why should we abandon all that, isolate ourselves internationally, and make ourselves a juicy target for Russians to invade again and force us back under their boot?
Finland, I stress, took the other route the last time around. Facing Russian ultimatums, they chose war. While they lost Karelia and Petsamo, they managed to keep their independence. After the war, they chose political neutrality and stayed out of NATO, but spent decades building up one of the largest armes in Europe against any future Russian invasions. Seeing the genocidal nature and the immense scale of Russian war against Ukraine dashed any hope of fighting off another Russian war alone. Finland abandoned the strategy of neutrality and chose to step into alliance with other European nations, as did the Swedes.
So despite quite different paths our countries took in the 20th century, we've all now reached the same conclusion that strong international cooperation is the best way to maintain our independence and security in the 21st century.
Are we all dumb and wrong? Should we cut ties and put our hopes on prayers that we won't become the target of the next war Russia decides to launch?
If you are the prime minister of Finland, Estonia or Poland, what is the responsible choice here that serves the interests of your people the best?
> We can debate all day long […] whether Russia should have any say in which alliances Ukraine enters
What the fuck? How can you debate on that at all, let alone all day? Does Russia own Ukraine? No. So does Russia have any say in which alliances Ukraine enters? Absolutely not.
The US government has warned Solomon Islands it will “respond accordingly” if its security agreement with China leads to a Chinese military presence in the Pacific island nation.
Does the USA own Solomon Islands? It is just a reality that powerful nations try to exert influence over other states, whether you like it or not. We can discuss how good or bad that is but it certainly not only Russia that thinks it has some say in what other countries can or can not do.
I’m pretty sure we all (or most of us) agree that the US bossing around the Solomon Islands is a bad thing, right? But since we don’t own Solomon Islands, they can go right ahead and do it anyway. And think we’re also all of us in agreement that it would not give the US license to invade. This all seems really obvious and not requiring any debate. Am I wrong about that? Do you feel a US invasion would be justified at that point?
> But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion.
Let's be real here: Russia wants Ukraine to be "under their influence", preferably the same way Belarus is, and Chechnya. They want Ukraine to be their puppet state.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 because the population already gave clear indications that they wanted to move closer to the West. Russia was losing their grip on Ukraine. That's the reason why they invaded. The NATO argument is all bullshit. Finland joined NATO. Is Russia invading Finland? Or at least securing their borders with Finland?
Russia wants to control Ukraine, no more, no less.
NATO doesn't control any of the countries that decided to join. These are sovereign countries that decided to join an alliance for their own security. Most of the benefit comes from article 5 that protects smaller countries from being invaded.
This is very different than an imperial dictatorship like Russia, which actually does turn their conquests into puppet states.
But of course Russia and its minions like to act as if NATO is an imperial power. They also like to act as if USA controls all the NATO countries. While if fact, those countries are democracies that decide their own destinies.
So in the end, it's actually Ukraine that wants to join NATO for obvious reasons, not the other way around. NATO could have already let Ukraine join if it wanted to.
This is not 'NATO wanting Ukraine under their influence', this is 'Ukraine wanting the security guarantees that NATO offers'.
I'm getting really tired of all the Russian bullshit that's being spread here.
They did, after NATO said no to their membership action plan (more immediately, though, they did that to Georgia.)
Its pretty clear that Russia's concern about Ukraine (and Georgia’s) membership in NATO isn't the reason for their aggression, but rather a result of their intended aggression and the complications that potential NATO involvement posed for that.
The Russo-Georgian and Russo-Ukrainian wars are the result of NATO accommodating Russia in this area, not a result of NATO threatening Russia.
I can offer Russian statements spanning more than two decades consistently demanding that NATO stops expanding eastwards as evidence that this is what Russia cared about. What evidence do you have to the contrary? Why did they invade?
Nobody denies that Russia has tried to do everything they could to leave their neighbours internationally isolated to make them easy to subjugate. Criminals would no doubt like to see the police abolished and security systems dismantled. The question is why should anyone lend any legitimacy to their pretended excuses and sacrifice the freedom and wellbeing of tens of millions of Europeans in the name of imagined Russian "security concerns", which is just thinly veiled frustration over being unable to conquer them by force as long as international cooperation remains tight.
I don't want to see Russians destroy my home with artillery, rape and murder the people around me, and force me to live in Russia, where human life has no value, elections are rigged, and police can rape peaceful protestors with impunity. Can you perhaps devote a few seconds to my security concerns for a change?
> Can you perhaps devote a few seconds to my security concerns for a change?
Nope, sorry. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, or what your concerns are. Russia and Putin insist that you must support Mother Russia, and be willing to die for the cause (of ensuring Putin gains power and wealth). /s
Like I already stated earlier, because they want to control it like Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan and Belarus. Only 1 of those countries was considered for NATO membership after the conflict kept going since 91 (considered membership in 2008).
> What evidence do you have to the contrary?
- Russia invading the North Caucasus (Chechnya, Dagestan, ...), without NATO having anything to do with it. *Please answer why they invaded.*
- Russia kept attacking Georgia since 91. Putin came in power in 2000 and he escalated that war, until it reached its peak in 2008 when NATO considered Georgias membership. So did Russia start that conflict because of NATO, or did Georgia wanted to join because of the conflict since 91? *Please answer why Russia kept the conflict going from 91 to 2008*
- Finland, a country with a huge border with Russia, applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Russia didn't invade that country to prevent them from joining *Please answer me why not*
- If Finland is such a huge threat for Russia because of NATO, *please show Russian troop buildup on that border since Finland applied and joined.*
- In 1999, Russia was one of the signatories of the Charter for European Security, which "reaffirmed the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve."
And last but not least, your dear friend Mr Putin said the following in 2002, as documented on the Kremlin website:
"On the topic of Ukraine’s accession to NATO, the Russian President said that it was entitled to make the decision independently. He does not see it as something that could cloud the relations between Russia and Ukraine."
It is sad how things turned out regarding the West's relationship with Russia.
Back around the year 2000, it really seemed things in eastern Europe were all moving in the right direction. The entire region was becoming more and more democratic, relations were warming up. Prosperity in Russia was increasing, things in general were looking positive.
It wasn't seriously discussed, and no concrete steps were taken, but there was speculation that Russia might join NATO eventually. There was concern about China (concern which has proved well founded) and having another strong partner in Russia would strengthen the bulwark against them.
But, well, should we really have expected so much from a former KGB officer like Putin? No, he turned into another Russian strongman, seeking only to enrich himself, and determined to only leave power feet-first. He illegally coerced the Russian oligarchs into giving him billions of dollars.
The story of democracy isn't over in the rest of eastern Europe (heck, it isn't over in the USA!), and there have been various partial successes and partial failures (esp. Hungary and Turkey). And the threat and actions of Russia has in turn strengthened the need for NATO.
Edit: I stand corrected - Concrete steps were taken for Russia to join NATO.
> It wasn't seriously discussed, and no concrete steps were taken, but there was speculation that Russia might join NATO eventually.
Concrete steps were, in fact, taken; with Russia both joining the NATO Partnership for Peace and hvaing a special cooperation deal wIth NATO, with various cooperation arrangements; it blew up when Putin wanted Russia to be admitted to NATO ahead of other Eastern European states, and without the political and other readiness criteriabeing used for other new members.
> But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of negotiations, Russia delivered on its promise. The outcome was rather predictable, at least ignoring that Russia did not react as strongly to previous NATO expansions.
Oh, so we're supposed to just listen and obey every dictator out there now? We are supposed to listen and obey when North Korea threatens our (or our ally's) destruction? Are we supposed to just sit back and let China dredge up new islands out of nothing in the South China Sea, and then claim the entire thing is now their territorial waters? Are we supposed to just let them have Taiwan too? How many times has China threatened something when we sold Taiwan some more F-16s or some other military hardware?
And what about our threats? Do you think the Kremlin wasn't warned about what the consequences to Russia would be if they invaded in 2022? Why shouldn't Putin have listened to us?
> My point is just that there was a relatively simple situation, Russia warns NATO, one step closer and there will be war, and NATO decides that it will make that step.
What's funny with all this is that Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO for decades, despite being very closely aligned with the rest of Europe. Russia made angry noises about that for years and years, and they listened. Wow! Exactly what you thought should happen! Fantastic!
And then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Then those two countries decided they could no longer listen to the threats coming from Russia, and had to choose what was best for their own security and prosperity. And so they joined NATO to protect themselves.
Why do you think Poland, one of the poorest countries in Europe, has been giving proportionately so much aid to Ukraine? Because they fear for the war spreading, and want to stop Russia now. Why do you think Poland wanted to join NATO back in 1999? Even though one of the member countries of NATO (Germany) that had invaded them 50 years earlier? Did they fear that Poland was going to be invaded by NATO, that this was some coercion? No, because NATO doesn't invade other countries.
Poland joined NATO because they were worried about the other country that had also invaded them 50 years previously, Russia.
Are you starting to see that it is Russia that is the problem here?
Oh, so we're supposed to just listen and obey every dictator out there now?
No, you can also go to war with them. The one side wants Ukraine in NATO, the other not, so there is a conflict. You can now either negotiate some compromise that is acceptable for both sides or you have to fight this out. I personally think that a Ukrainian NATO membership is not worth hundred thousands of dead and wounded, millions of refuges and a destroyed country, but others obviously disagree.
And what about our threats? [...] Why shouldn't Putin have listened to us?
Which threats? Putin already decided that Ukrainian NATO membership is so important that he is willing to go to war over the issue if there is no political solution, he certainly expected sanctions and support from the West.
> I personally think that a Ukrainian NATO membership is not worth hundred thousands of dead and wounded, millions of refuges and a destroyed country, but others obviously disagree.
Well, it has been for the Ukrainians to decide. They have fought like hell to avoid being conquered by a foreign dictator that would destroy their country, their culture and the rape, torture and murder their own people.
> Which threats? Putin already decided that Ukrainian NATO membership is so important that he is willing to go to war over the issue if there is no political solution, he certainly expected sanctions and support from the West.
Which threats? I assure you that in the run-up to February 2022, there were some very serious phone calls and meetings between the USA State Department and the Russian Foreign Ministry. Just because that wasn't reported on the news doesn't mean it didn't happen. Often we try to find solutions to problems without it being a public announcement.
This is idiotic, it is not up to the Ukrainians to decide to join NATO, their decision ends at applying for NATO membership. Not everybody gets to join NATO, it's not some open membership organization that anybody gets to join.
As someone who work in drones and robotics, it’s one of the reasons I always request the end goals not just the project objectives, also, nothing is weaponized, I would prefer to sleep well at night knowing I only hurt flies in my life.
In general, I 100% agree with you, and I totally see how the technology displayed here can, is, and will be applied to more offensive purposes. But in this one specific case, this thing is a missile defense tool. Its sole purpose is to reduce killing.
Once those people will realize that they cannot win without machines and replenish the human resoruce fast enough, it becomes a game of who gets bankrupt first loses the war. If your country doesn't do it, China and Russia and Iran will.
Some people need killing. But that’s not really the goal of building better weapons systems. Wars only get started by people who think they have a chance to win. Having a large, well-equipped military with the best weapons and then pledging to deploy that military to the defense of half the world deters a lot of wars from even starting in the first place.
A lot of people will argue that defense companies want wars to break out to increase their business, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In wartime, the military mostly needs cheap commodities—ammunition, supplies, food, fuel—nothing you can really differentiate on. And especially the most recent wars have mostly been against poorly armed terrorists, when the defense industry makes a lot more money selling weapons that would be total overkill against the Taliban but potentially useful against Russia or China.
The point appears to be the kinetic interceptor suicide only happens a small fraction of the time. Most usage would be the reuse case.
> Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner built for ground-based air defense that can rapidly launch, identify, intercept, and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats — or be safely recovered and relaunched at near-zero cost.
Shooting down supersonic, hypersonic, and stealth missiles is hard. You may need to fire multiple anti-air missile just to hit one attacking anti-ship missile. But doing so depletes your magazine faster and it can just come down to who has more ammo.
If you’re able to fire a couple anti-air missiles, and then recover the ones that miss, or have them loiter and acquire a new target, I could see that as being an advantage.