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Largest source of news for GenZ:
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Ignore the useless Brit millennial calling every warship a âbattleshipâ. Notably all these marine âdronesâ have Starlink dishes:
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Battle ships 
of war!
Battle ships of war!
Correct me if Iâm wrong, but as I recollect the Navy has a âthingâ about ships and boats. So pretty much all Navy vessels are âshipâ, the subs being the big exception. SMALL boats, like the gunboats used to patrol the Mekong, are âboatsâ. Seaborne drones being what they are, rather doubt the Navy looks at them as âshipsâ.
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Youâre not wrong
Drone vs drone:
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This is mostly Ukrainian propaganda. Russia may have lost a lot of tanks, but so have the Ukrainians. And any war of attrition with Russia is way in favour of Russia.
But consider that the major front the Ukrainians have held for so long has crumpled and the Ukrainian forces are in retreat. Whether they will be able to establish a fallback line is open to serious question. The West is running out of ready resources to give the Ukrainians for this fight.
Then there is the new strategic offensive the Russians have begun. It is aimed at electrical sources and distribution points. So far no one has a reasonable answer. The West, which should be prepared for such a contingency, seeing as our own grid is SO open and weak, seems to have no answer.
I donât think the war in Ukraine has long to go. If Trump wins, there will be some settlement. If Biden wins there will be a settlement albeit of a different nature. Either way, the war is over; the Ukrainians just donât know that yet. Kind of like Nazi Germany after the Battle of Kursk. They were done but just didnât know it.
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Yes, the channel is definitely pro-Ukrainian, but it covers technical innovations from both sides. I just donât know similar Russian channels.
I wouldnât be so cheery about Russiaâs prospects: I see Ukraine running out of anti-aircraft weapons, but I donât see the frontline crumbling, and I see Europe ever more united on this matter.
Ukraine might be operating on the old Vietnam casualty differential - but we know how that ended.
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Check the London Daily Mail. Two years ago, it was all Rah! Rah! Ukraine! Now Ukraine is seldom mentioned. Some European politicians may be all for World War III, but it seems that the great bulk of the European population has lost interest in far-off Ukraine, and instead has a lot of problems at home (like illegal immigration).
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Our problem is that we hold ourselves as some kind of gold standard. Thus Vietnam becomes a âstandardâ for what befalls a country which attempts to force a population to do something they may not be willing to do.
That being the case, political will is usually the defining factor. There are others that enter into the question, but I believe this is the driving one. The Russians are not known for. being pansies in the political will column. It is usually more in the materiel part they fall down. Here that is less of a factor.
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Russians lose will as well, and this is a good film about the war in Afghanistan:
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War is hell, to quote a deceased white American. Everyone has failures as well as successes, and everyone makes mistakes. Some historians have argued that victory goes to the side which makes the fewest important mistakes.
Soviet Union/Russia did not lose will during the much worse WWII, and Russia managed to withdraw from its involvement in Afghanistan in good order â not in a panicked âJoe Bidenâ debacle. It is probably not a good bet to predict that Russian will in the Ukraine will fade faster than European will. After all, Zelenskyâs giant mistake may have been to initiate a war in the Donbas when his regime was entirely dependent on foreign support. Even if some Ukrainians want to keep on fighting, they are doomed if their Euro/DC Swamp paymasters lose interest.
Rational politicians in the West, looking out for their own countriesâ self-interests, would be telling the Zelensky regime it is time to sit down and negotiate whatever deal they can. Sadly, we donât have rational politicians in the West.
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This is such an important point that Gavin makes. Political will is much more a fungable item than tanks, missiles, etc. But there ARE examples of just that happening. Look at the Brit record in Burma I think it was. They. were faced with a well organized and led revolution of communists that was far down the road of winning. They managed to break them, destroy their infrastructure, and demoralize the ârecruitsâ. There are others albeit not huge numbers because most governments think in scleroses ways.No insight, no innovation, no relying on old history. The US Marine Corps had a totally unknown small book - about how to win an insurgency war, based on years of squashing them in Central America. Only years after we left did someone âfindâ the little battle manual!
Then thereâs Texas, which won their independence from a much stronger but far less motivated opponent. Russia is a lot more like the Texans than Santa Ana.
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Iran strikes Israel!
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WSJ: How American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine
Drones from American startups have been deemed glitchy and expensive, prompting Ukraine to turn to alternatives from China
The Silicon Valley company Skydio sent hundreds of its best drones to Ukraine to help fight the Russians. Things didnât go well.
Absent solutions from the West, Ukraine has turned to cheaper Chinese products to fill its drone arsenal.
There has been a deluge of venture capital invested in startups trying to build small, AI-powered aircraft, hoping to sell them to the U.S. government. Startups have focused on commercial drones that can be built faster and cheaper than the large military drones made by traditional defense contractors. Nearly 300 U.S.-based drone-technology companies raised a total of around $2.5 billion in venture-capital funding in the past two years, according to the data firm PitchBook.
American drone company executives say they didnât anticipate the electronic warfare in Ukraine. In Skydioâs case, its drone was designed in 2019 to meet communications standards set by the U.S. military. Several startup executives said U.S. restrictions on drone parts and testing limit what they can build and how fast they can build it.
Those restrictions have proven a problem in the drone battles that sometimes require daily updates and upgrades, said Georgii Dubynskyi, Ukraineâs deputy minister of digital transformation, the agency that oversees the countryâs drone program.
Ukraine has found ways to get tens of thousands of drones as well as drone parts from China. The military is using off-the-shelf Chinese drones, primarily from SZ DJI Technology.
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Very lucrative business opportunity⌠(source)
By 2015, the Black Hornet had deployed with U.S. Marine Corps special operations teams.[9] Although the Army was seeking a mini-drone for use by individual squads through the Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS) program, the individually handmade Black Hornet was seen as too expensive for large-scale deployment, with a unit costing as much as US$195,000.[20]
In 2018, the US Army bought 60 Hornet 3 drones,[21] and in 2022 another 300.[22] The US Army bought an undisclosed number of Hornet 3 drones in 2023, some of them intended for Ukraine.[22]
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And so it goes. First itâs too expensive. Then itâs OK for special use. And finally, when no one is looking, they spend large amounts for more general use. THAT was always the goal - they just had to get the budget accustomed to it.
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