There is a historical precedent to this… the Fu-Go balloon bomb… not a Pokemon, but arguably similar ways of thinking around it. Had modern electronics been around perhaps the outcome of the campaign would have been different.
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Given the competence of the Zelensky regime and the variability of winds, it is only a matter of time before “Joe Biden” has to send an F-35 with a million dollar missile to shoot down a Ukrainian balloon bomb which has drifted over the continental US. Of course, it will all be Putin’s fault!
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Really, it’s the same “vulnerability” Russian tanks suffer from in this war. And Israeli tanks have suffered from similar (and now the same) against Hezbollah and Hamas over the last 20 years or so
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In the midst of the jingoist English rah! rah! on how the Ukrainian forces (armed by co-belligerents in the West) can defeat the evil Russkies, the article manages to squeeze in a moment of truth:
“War continues evolving, and attack and defence continue to swap leads.”
Exactly! English tanks were a great advance a century ago in World War I. Naturally, this spurred advances over the subsequent decades in the defense against tanks, from anti-tank missiles to today’s drones. English hearts may beat faster at the thought of donated Western tanks charging into Russia, but the world is unlikely ever again to see the kind of great tank battles fought on the Eastern Front in World War II – just as the world will never again see the likes of dreadnaught battleships or (soon) giant aircraft carriers.
These kinds of articles always seem to assume a kind of “Marquess of Queensberry” rules for war in the 21st Century – fighting will be restricted to where one side wants it to be restricted, i.e. the Ukraine & Russia. This ignores modern missile technology. At some point, the rational choice (for either side) becomes to cut off the head of the opposing snake – London, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Washington DC or Moscow. And then we will be back to fighting with clubs and stones.
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US authorities are unable to stop criminals bringing multiple tons of cocaine and fentanyl into the country. What makes any politician think he can pass a law which will stop entrepreneurs smuggling a little box of computer chips out of the country – enough to make hundreds of drones? Especially when most of those chips were anyway imported into the West from Asia.
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My guess this was more to prevent Russia from getting them:
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Per the article, Our Betters spent money they do not have to buy 81 out of 117 planes offered for sale. The planes are unusable, which explains the low price. That probably means they are unflyable. And they are in Kazakhstan. Landlocked Kazakhstan.
How are Our Betters planning to get those planes out? Because this is surely a “Buyer Collects” kind of deal. Maybe ask China or Iran for permission to transport the old planes through their territory? 
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Assuming the Kyiv Post isn’t chasing at shadows.
I suspect that they are trying to keep sources of cheap spare parts away from the Russians. Which means that they probably just have them cut up or otherwise destroyed, probably by a local firm that has ties to the local dictator. That way, Kazspetsexport has not lied. They would have sold scrap to a local scrapper. At no point does the bribe transaction come from the US.
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The Rhodus Intelligence team documented the entire Russian missile manufacturing base. This includes 28 ballistic, cruise, anti-ship, and air defense production facilities belonging to or associated with the four key corporations – Roscosmos, Tactical Missiles, Almaz-Antey, and Rostec. This open-source intelligence sample demonstrates our investigation methodology using an example of the Votkinsk Plant, one of the relatively more secret facilities in Russia’s missile industry.
Our investigation sheds light into the rationales of the Russian military industrial management, the logic of resource allocation, tradeoffs regarding the organization and optimization of production processes for the current and expected scale of output, as well as the existing chokepoints in the military industry’s production chain.
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China’s Real Military Budget Has Quietly Become Almost as Big as Ours
Beijing’s publicly released military budget is inaccurate and does not adequately capture the colossal scope and scale of China’s ongoing military buildup and wide-ranging armed forces modernization.
After accounting for economic adjustments and estimating reasonable but uncounted expenditures, the buying power of China’s 2022 military budget balloons to an estimated $711 billion—triple Beijing’s claimed topline and nearly equal with the United States’ military budget that same year.
Equal defense spending between the United States and China plays to Beijing’s benefit. As a global power, the United States must balance competing priorities in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere, which spreads Washington’s budget thinly across multiple theaters. Meanwhile, each yuan China invests in its military directly builds its regional combat power in Asia.
America’s spy community has confirmed that Beijing’s defense spending is on par with Washington’s, but questions remain. The intelligence community’s estimate of China’s $700 billion in annual military expenditures needs more transparency to better convey Beijing’s military budget breakdown and inform policy debates regarding US defense spending investments, gaps, and imbalances.
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What’s not said is that our interest payment to China for the debt they hold pays for a goodly portion of this military development. We are, once again, working against ourselves.
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An interesting question is what portion of China’s defense spending is domestic versus imported?
We know that a significant chunk of US defense spending on weapon systems is for imported items – Russian titanium, Chinese electronics, Japanese steel, Swiss mechanical elements, etc. But the continued availability of imports is not assured, especially in the event of a (non-nuclear) wider war. Does China have the same fatal weakness?
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Maybe they account for this, but they probably get 25 to 50 percent more per dollar spent. Their equipment and infrastructure costs are significantly lower cost than ours.
Nuclear power plant cost is just one example. Less than half the cost per megawatt
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No need to be alarmed, folks. China’s just a paper tiger…because reasons.
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If they do I’m sure they’re actively working on it…most likely as part of some five-year plan.
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Pandas
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The person who posted this is a Latvian who was born in Soviet Union during Brezhnev or Andropov
He also supports NATO membership for Ukraine.
He hates Russia regardless of who the leader is including the Romanov family
Smart guy but he has blind spots regarding Russia
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Compared to some of the other reasons I’ve heard, this one actually makes the most sense! 
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