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[–][deleted]  (1 child)

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    [–]TheJamesRocket 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The problem is that the casualty radius of an explosive munition decreases radically when it is used against entrenched troops. Fuel-air explosives rely on blast overpressure to destroy their targets, and soldiers in a trench are well protected against blast waves.

    [–]TheJamesRocket 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    As it turns out, advancements in technology have reached a point where offensive operations are no longer strongly favored in confrontations between two opposing armies with equal technological capabilities.

    Its not about technology, though. It is very difficult for an attacking force to make any headway when the defending forces are numerically superior to them. You are supposed to outnumber the defender by a significant margin before you launch an attack; the old rule of thumb was to achieve a three to one ratio for a near guaranteed breakthrough. The Ukrainians have always outnumbered the Russians on the ground, especially in infantry. They have lots of foot soldiers to hold the entire frontline in strength, with enough in reserve to respond to any Russian attacks. Thats the main reason why the war has bogged down into a stalemate.

    The other reason is that it takes a high degree of combat proficiency (leadership, training, initiative, etc) in order to successfully execute mobile warfare. The Russians have shown that while they are more competent than the Ukrainians, they are still not competent enough to prosecute deep offensive operations. They simply have no answer to the Ukrainian numerical superiority, other than to try to bleed them dry in attritional warfare (using their artillery superiority to inflict disproportionate casualtys). This approach shows not only a limited tactical repertoire, but an apalling disregard for human life

    And aside from that, neither Russia nor Ukraine is at the cutting edge of technology in terms of their Army equipment. The most common MBT in use by both sides is theT-64 and T-72 tank, dating back from the 1960s and 1970s. Russias aerospace equipment is state of the art, though, as is its electronic warfare equipment.

    Thanks to modern telecommunications technology, it is no longer possible to mobilize large amounts of men and materiel in secret and launch surprise blitzkrieg offensives.

    But the Russians did exactly that at the start of the war. They covertly mobilised their Army and launched a surprise attack on the Ukraine, taking them off guard. Whether that surprise was achieved in spite of good intelligence is irrelevant; whatever intelligence the Ukrainians supposedly had did not motivate them to take any precautions. The Russians were able to make impressive advances in the first week of the war due to the element of surprise. But they failed to capture the capital of Kiev, or to deal a crippling blow to the Ukrainian Army. Because of that, the Russians committed a strategic blunder. They squandered their chance to end the war quickly and decisively. They were just a step short of achieving the kindof Blitzkrieg victorys that the Germans routinely pulled off during WW2.

    Because this kind of war is best-suited for traditional, conservative societies with both large numbers of patriotic men as well as the sufficient industrial capacity to support large armies in the field.

    This is the kind of war that could be fought by pre-1945 Germany, Imperial Japan, Russia, or even early 20th century France. But ZOG, and especially Weimerica, is totally unsuited for such a war.

    This is 100% correct. In spite of the deficiencys of their military, Russian society has a cultural ethos that is capable of sustaining a large scale war on the ground. They are able to do this while using less state-coercion than the Ukrainians are using to sustain the war effort. This is perhaps their most impressive achievement. It is not at all clear that the United States (or any other Western state) would be capable of sustaining a large ground war.

    [–]Alan_Crowe 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    We will have to wait and see how drone warfare works out. My guess for the next stage goes something like this:

    The infantry man doesn't carry a rifle because infantry fight each other at ranges of two or three miles. Fly your drone out ahead of you, two or three miles. Spot the enemy infantry man flying his drone. Relay his position back to your artillery. You kill your enemy with a 155 mm shell, not a 5.56 mm bullet.

    Do drones engage in dog fights with each other? Does an infantry man juggle several drones? Are there wheeled/tracked drones that go to look in trenches and bunkers?

    On a different tack, what happens with decoys? Currently, if you try to stock pile ammunition, the pile gets spotted and attacked. OK, but tents are cheap, what if you put up a thousand tents, spread about. Perhaps with covered walkways. Which tent actually contains the ammunition? The enemy could use up a lot of suicide drones attacking every tent.

    Maybe I've phrased the previous paragraph badly. Currently one puts camouflage netting over genuine assets, with the intention that the camouflage netting gets mistaken for trees, not camouflage netting. That is getting tricky, drones are getting too close and seeing that it is just netting. But if you go to town, with lots and lots of camouflage netting (perhaps covering nothing, perhaps covering inflatable tanks copied from the deception operations before D-day (the netting just has to conceal the tank/self-propelled-artillery well enough to conceal that it is an inflatable)) , it is sufficient that the drones don't get to see through it and see which nets cover genuine assets.

    I foresee a lot of tactical innovation before things settle. Maybe that is a repeat of WWI. 1914 to 1918 saw a lot of tactical innovation as the British invented the tank and learned that you needed to use tanks in mass formations. Meanwhile the Germans invented Storm Troopers using infiltration tactics; lightly manned positions are vulnerable to infiltration, well manned positions suffer too many casualties from artillery barrages.

    The importance of drones will lead to the importance of electronic warfare. Will there be an electronic equivalent of the machine gun, to slaughter drones just like the machine gun slaughtered conventional infantry attacks? I would guess at a few early successes for electro-magnetic pulse weapons leading to great victories in the wake of all the enemy drones falling out of the sky. Then disaster as the enemy re-equips with EMP hardened drones.

    [–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    But thankfully, it doesn't seem like AI or robotics technology is anywhere close to such a thing, and a fully autonomous combat droid with equal or superior performance to a human infantryman may not even be possible.

    AI is making advances everyday. We have ChatGPT that beats most people on IQ level.

    https://bgr.com/tech/chatgpt-took-an-iq-test-and-its-score-was-sky-high/

    There are also robots who are capable of full parkour.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1_QhJ1EhQ

    Keep in mind, that's just civilian technology too. No country is going to leak their Terminator Robots similar to how the nukes of WW2 were kept secret until one country opted to use them.

    Ironically, all your points indicate that ZOG will make this switch. No one will use Humans in the future now that automation is set to replace them for a fraction of the price.

    This of course assuming that no nuclear weapons or other WMDs are used. But if ZOG is stupid enough to use nukes, then that means the ZOG world order will be destroyed anyway. One does not simply use nuclear weapons (the single greatest taboo since 1945, even bigger than questioning the Holocaust) and then go back to normalcy.

    Just think back to the comment I just made. If a country has complete automation, then nukes become futile (robots can survive radiation and replace themselves).

    [–]TheJamesRocket 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    You can't conflate cognitive functions with locomotive functions. Computationally, locomotion is actually much harder than cognition. AI has made impressive advances in cognition, not in locomotion. There are not going to be any effective humanoid robots anytime soon.

    Multicellular life only has effective locomotion due to 500+ million years of evolution driven by massive selection pressures (in contrast, cognitive functions had much weaker selective pressures).

    [–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Multicellular life only has effective locomotion due to 500+ million years of evolution driven by massive selection pressures (in contrast, cognitive functions had much weaker selective pressures).

    Robots are artificial in nature. They evolve everytime technology advances.

    There are not going to be any effective humanoid robots anytime soon.

    Arguably robots don't need to have a 1:1 Human design. That's a baseline we're familiar with. But if they can make use of extra arms or a completely alien shape, they would do it.

    For example, here's a robot that's completely rectangular in design, yet it still traverses and does it janitorial duties just fine.

    https://twitter.com/AiBreakfast/status/1692249314016284786

    [–]Blackbrownfreestuff 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Likewise in the aerial space, the development of air defense technology over the past couple decades, as seen with the S-400 system, has outpaced the ability of airplanes to evade air defenses.

    Ground based air defenses are vulnerable and can be suppressed by electronic warfare and anti-radiation missiles.

    The Russians seem to be relying on missiles rather than aircraft to carry out both strategic and tactical interdiction, while CAS as a concept seems to be largely abandoned because it is simply too risky in a modern battlefield.

    The Russians are relying on missiles rather than aircraft because they know NATO is covertly supplying the Judeo-Ukrainian regime with targeting data. NATO fixed radar, AWACS, and aerostat radar track every Russian warplane movement and provide Ukrainian air defenses with a firing solution.

    Russia can't suppress Ukrainian air defenses with anti-radiation missiles because they only have to turn on their fire control radar momentarily when they fire a missile.