That’s not the point, it’s more like

• Fire an arrow at an enemy wearing full plate armour and carrying a crossbow
• Arrow bounces off armour
• “lol that’s so outdated” shoots you back with a crossbow

Sure, you could get lucky and hit a gap in the armour, but what you’re doing is wildly inefficient. As stated in the article, a bunch of the north korean missiles are detonating before reaching their targets, and they’re also very inaccurate. Just like in the arrow/armour analogy, it’s not like they’re useless and can’t cause harm, it’s that they’re wildly ineffective compared to modern missiles.

More importantly, the point is the state of russian (+ allies) manufacturing capabilities. If they were capable of fielding enough modern weapons, they wouldn’t be using outdated and inefficient ones. Sure, you can arm modern soldiers with swords and crossbows, and they can probably kill people with them. However, you’re going to choose firearms and grenades 10/10 times if you can.

Well, in the sense that Orbans primary political views are “We should build a far-right nationalist dictatorship/oligarchy led by Viktor Orban”, Magyar does actually disagree with his core political views.

I’m honestly a bit surprised that some kind of net that can be shot from an under-barrel mounted grenade launcher hasn’t been developed/deployed yet. I’m imagining something like a standard 40 mm grenade casing that contains a net that folds out after maybe 50 m (or a programmable distance, or a proximity trigger). Very thin/light strings are enough to take down a drone, so you could probably easily pack a 5 x 5 m or even 10 x 10 m net into a 40 mm casing. People are already shooting at drones with rifles, I would imagine something that lets you shoot out a large net to 100 + meters would make taking down drones a lot easier for an infantryman, and being able to fire it from a standard barrel-mounted grenade launcher would make it very easy to deploy.

I would imagine that this kind of thing could drastically improve the ability of infantry to deal with drones when they are exposed. I’m sure there’s a good reason this hasn’t been implemented, but I have a hard time figuring out what that reason is.

Definitely, however a major advantage of flak over solid rounds (especially with modern automatic range finding and programmable munitions) is that it’s a very easy and cheap way to turn a 1 m miss on that 30 cm drone at 1 km distance into a hit.

The weapons shooting these munitions typically shoot anything from 12.7 mm to 30-40 mm munitions, while even bird shot is enough to take out a drone. With that in mind, there’s really no reason to not make that 30 mm shell fragment into a dispersed cloud of bird shot that would barely harm a plane, since it makes it so much easier to take out the thousands of drones attacking you. Whenever the occasional heavier target shows up, you can just disable the fragmentation effect (programmable munitions) and you basically have a CIWS.

I honestly believe that the enormous amount of drones on the battlefield today will cause a resurgence of flak as a primary AA weapon. For a while now, missiles have been the go-to, but expensive and advanced missiles can be countered by massive swarms of cheap drones. Flak cannons with modern targeting systems and automatic range finding is probably the most reasonable counter to these drone swarms.

The fact that Ukraine has the reserves to be able to send specialists to the Middle East right now shows which way this is tipping.

While Ukraine is garnering support (and frankly, debt) from some rich nations by sending them resources, russias access to missiles/drones is getting worse since Iran needs them for themselves, so likely won’t export any more for the time being.

An air war like this is fundamentally about destroying your enemies assets faster than they can produce them, while building your own assets faster than they’re destroyed. If one part gets an upper hand in that balance, it will inherently snowball quickly, since that party is getting more assets for each day, while the enemy has fewer assets for each day. The most crucial component here is probably your manufacturing capacity for weapons systems.

Of course, it takes a lot of time for this to materialise when russia has had so deep stores of weapons. Hopefully, we’re seeing a long-term effect of Ukraine having a larger manufacturing capacity for air defence assets than russia. If they actually have that, it’s also because their manufacturing capacity has grown very fast, which means the discrepancy will only increase. The tipping point is when Ukraine is both manufacturing air defence capabilities faster than russia, and are increasing their manufacturing capacity faster.

Which is honestly kind of ironic when thinking about the fact that the EU was built from the rubble of WWII, which was started by a dictator who took over a democracy.

This seems like a good place to start. This kind of task (carrying ≈ 30 shells of ≈ 50 kg each per day) isn’t really on the high-end as far as “exhausting and physically taxing” goes when you consider what soldiers go through (of course, completely depending on how far they’re carried). However, it does place a significant strain on your body to do it over time. That means they can test these things for this kind of task where the soldiers should be completely capable of functioning without the exoskeleton if it doesn’t work properly. That way, they get testing in non-critical situations before they can scale up the use of these to tasks that humans aren’t even capable of doing without the exoskeleton once they’ve ensured they work properly, don’t break down etc.

Looks like it’s only a matter of time before we see up-armoured assault troops that can carry 100+ kg of gear and shoulder-mounted weapons while taking trenches… must suck to be in the next batch of prospective sunflower fertiliser.

I would think a lot of wars were ended by economic exhaustion, the inability to continue despite aggression still working.

I would argue that when someone has been aggressive to the point of exhaustion, where they’re unable to continue, that aggression has failed. I think that’s what’s meant by the quote too. Wars don’t end when one side seeks peace, they end when both sides either seek peace or when the aggressor is unable to continue (aggression has failed).

Haven’t they already done this though? Purposefully leaked false intel to the American admin just to confirm that it ended up with the russians? It’s the oldest trick in the book to smoke out a rat, and I seem to remember reading about them doing like a year or two ago.

While I don’t really doubt the person in the video was killed, I don’t see much evidence pointing to them being a commander, or to them being hit here. What I see is a person getting to the ground and quickly rolling to cover in the ditch.

Regardless: It’s great to see that the offensive is pushing deep and fast enough that invaders are being surprised far behind what they think is the front!

Very well written piece! I think she makes a very good point writing about how women in the military need to be valued as actual soldiers, not just “tokens” or “symbols”.

Around half the population consists of women, and they have the same right to fight for their freedom as any man. Not only that, there are plenty of combat positions where women are at least as capable as men. A well functioning military needs to understand that and try to give every soldier the opportunity to work with the tasks they do best: That includes valuing women as actual agents of resistance, not just symbols to boost morale.

Yeah look if we really are seeing diagnoses suddenly rise, and it’s not just “a better telescope”, maybe it is worth considering exploring environmental causes, diagnostic criteria, societal tolerance of certain traits etc. That’s fair.

Thanks for making an effort to understand what I’m trying to get at here. Honestly, this is like my primary point and I appreciate that you’re recognising it. It can get tiresome to discuss with people that never seem to understand that you have good intentions, thank you for seeing mine.

What concerns me about your responses is that “investigating why diagnoses are increasing” is used all the time to cast doubt on ADHD itself.

And I absolutely agree that that’s a big problem. My point is concerning when the same sentence is used in the positive, constructive, sense that this is clearly something we as a society need to look more closely at, because something is very obviously wrong on either an environmental or societal level if a large fraction of the population needs medication in order to function properly.

I honestly have the impression that we agree on pretty much all points here but that we’re talking past each other. I agree to pretty much everything you’re saying, and I’m all for helping as many people as possible live as good lives as possible.

What I’m trying to say is basically that problematising the large volume of (and increase in) psychological diagnoses can be valid, and doesn’t have to be founded in trying to downplay those diagnoses. To take a very concrete example: Kids that are disposed to growing very short or tall can be offered growth (blocking) hormones, such that they grow to a “more normal” height. Today, very few kids are offered, or take, these hormones. Now, let’s say some area suddenly saw a rapid increase where 20 % of kids needed growth hormones to grow to “ordinary” height. I would say that we need to figure out what has happened: Is there something about the environment that has caused stunted growth to become ver common? Has the window for what is “normal” gotten narrower?

Of course, in this example, it’s very was to compare to historical records of human height. The same isn’t true for mental disorders. That doesn’t mean the same discussion isn’t worth having- at its core, this is a discussion about how we can make society as good as possible for as many as possible. That also involves discussing what should be treated as a disorder that disproportionately makes people’s life objectively worse, and what is within the “normal” range that we should rather build society around accepting.

You cannot equate ADHD and spectrum mental conditions with disease.

I agree, the only way I meant to compare them is that we diagnose and treat both with medication.

We as a society need to accept that and stop thinking these are diseases that need to be “fixed”.

I also agree 100 % with this, and it’s part of what I’m trying to get at with my “option a”. As of today, there are regions where over 20 % of the population are diagnosed with, and treated for, ADHD. At that point, I’m asking the question if we’re creating a problem by treating something that appears to be within the spectrum of how “normal people just are” as a problem that needs to be fixed. My point is exactly what you’re saying here: If a large fraction of the population has this “problem” that needs to be “fixed”, haven’t we just gotten to a point where we have a too narrow definition of what is “normal” and “healthy” human behaviour? Shouldn’t we in that case rather be looking at how we can structure our society in such a way that a larger span of the population is capable of functioning in it without medication, rather that trying to force everyone to conform to the same, ever narrowing, mould?

I’m in no way an anti-vaxxer or anti-science (I’m a researcher myself). I still think it can be justified to look closely at the large increase in, and volume of, various mental disorders. First of all: There’s no doubt that a lot more people are being diagnosed due to better diagnosis tools.

However, a major difference between psychological and somatic illness is that the divide between sick and healthy is (typically) a lot sharper in the latter case. Either you have an injury or infection, or you don’t, and we can measure that. In the case of e.g. depression or ADHD, there’s a much wider gray zone from e.g. “healthy person having a bad day” to “clinically depressed”.

The point I’m getting at is this: When a certain percentage of the population is diagnosed with a disorder, you have to ask whether we’ve started diagnosing ordinary human existence as a disease. Alternatively, you have to start looking at a systematic level for why an enormous portion of the population has a certain disorder. Where that limit should be is an open question, but I would argue that when something like 10-20 % of the population has a specific disorder, we’re no longer just looking at individual cases of disease but rather at (a) the possibility that the criteria for diagnosis are two wide, so we’re catching “healthy” people with it, or (b) we have a society-level problem (e.g. an epidemic).

I know of areas with ADHD-rates around 20 %. For a somatic illness, we would never let that kind of infection rate pass without taking a closer look at what’s going on at the societal level.

One of the things I’ve wondered about with these tunnels is how they prevent drones from just entering at the “end” of the tunnel. Do they have a net curtain or something that a car can easily drive through/under, just pushing the curtain aside, or do they basically just hope that drones don’t get inside?

Also, another thought just hit me: Wouldn’t it be a nightmare for logistics if someone just decided to target the poles holding up the nets? I would imagine that you could make a road basically impassable by hitting every other pole for a couple kilometers, and that could be done in a coordinated attack, since the poles aren’t exactly moving anywhere. Obviously, this isn’t something being done, so I’m really just wondering why?

Translation for the non-german speakers

Ukraine launched tactical attacks in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, but these only halted the slow Russian advance. Russia, on the other hand, largely captured the city of Konstantinovka, and the entire Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad area is now unusable for the Ukrainian army. The months-long battle is slowly drawing to a close.

If only based on typical human behaviour: Probably both. There’s always someone that’s into something a bit different, so if Sapiens and Neaderthals intermixed sufficiently, there’ll always be some couple that gets it on. Hell, there’s people that fuck dogs (and dogs that try to fuck people). If dogs had been capable of consenting, I’m absolutely positive that some consenting human/dog couple would exist. I would say that consenting inter-species couples would have been inevitable given enough mixing of the groups.

Then there’s also the long history of sexual violence in conflicts. Sapiens and Neanderthals were competing for resources, so there’s bound to have been tribal conflict at some point. Just based on how humans behave in that kind of situation, it’s pretty much guaranteed that people were raped during those conflicts.