81–90 of 92 posts
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Civilian drones can be jammed. Jammers are used to counter remotely detonated IEDs already.
Jammer is a massive radio beacon screaming into a void your position. So nice on paper but will work against you.
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That's what we have the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons for. It bans the use of incendiary weapons against military targets in civilian areas via air delivery, and delivery by other means under various circumstances. Cf https://treaties.unoda.org/t/ccwc_p3 Allegedly, the US fired such weapons from helicopters in urban areas with a civilian presence.
Which the US signed in 2009. The 2nd battle of Fallujah was in 2004. Do you have a source for the air delivery? I'm only seeing reference to WP artillery which is somehow kosher compared to something dropped from an aircraft. This entire thread is a distraction though. The article is about urban combat in the context of Russia's war in Ukraine which nobody here wants to discuss for some reason.
"We hadn't yet promised not to do war crimes, so it's ok if we did."
Do you have a source for the air delivery?
There were articles about it at the time. From what I could find just now, the claim about helicopters goes back to an Italian documentary[1]. The use of Mark-77 bombs has been confirmed, but depending on the target, this can be considered justified according to international law (aside from the whole war having been started under false pretenses, of course). That same documentary claimed use of Mark-77 bombs in civilian areas of Baghdad, though (cf [2]).
> This entire thread is a distraction though.
Sure. Let me be clear: The fact that the US military has dirty hands does not absolve non-Western powers of their respective culpabilities. Russia in particular has fielded kill squads performing extrajudicial executions (Chechnya), private armies of brownshirt (Wagner group), and they are responsible for the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since WW2 (first battle of Grozny) with tens of thousand of civilian casualties, and lots of other atrocities I don't remember off-hand. Russia = bad. Satisfied?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_77_bomb#Use_in_Iraq_and_A...
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We were talking about conventional military tactics (e.g., artillery) on civilian areas, so a topic entirely separate from the "terrible individual incidents" you mention: on the conventional tactics front, I disagree that there is a significant difference. When a conventional military wants to wrest military control of an area from another smaller conventional military (one that for good reason has some guerilla ele…
It depends what we call, tactics. I think it’s clear that for the Russian military those murderous excesses are a tactic. Terrorising the population is intentional. Systematic artillery and rocket barrages of schools and hospitals can’t be accidental. They’re not an incidental activity that sometimes happens, it’s far too systematic and ubiquitous to be that. The Russian command knows full well the on the ground mass…
As for the US legal and investigative machinery, its effectiveness is massively inflated. Just like the effectiveness of pre-bombing assessments, etc. See this amazing story (but there are also plenty of more direct examples): https://archive.ph/20220122213311/https://www.nytimes.com/20... If your army involves itself in more and larger conflicts all over the world than any other force, then putting up easily surmountable administrative hurdles does not a moral military make, even relatively.
*However, there's really no point in making my argument since the scuppered talks in April. In practice today, there is no harm from thinking Russia is acting in a uniquely evil way, as there are no talks left to scupper, for various unrelated reasons.
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If you were a commander on the ground what would you have done to better achieve the objective?
Which is an extremely weak defense. The excuse any commander can use for raising cities, just gotta claim it was the only way to do it and hey presto.
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It depends what we call, tactics. I think it’s clear that for the Russian military those murderous excesses are a tactic. Terrorising the population is intentional. Systematic artillery and rocket barrages of schools and hospitals can’t be accidental. They’re not an incidental activity that sometimes happens, it’s far too systematic and ubiquitous to be that. The Russian command knows full well the on the ground mass…
I still disagree. My point is not to diminish the brutality of the Russian assault in any material sense, but rather to say that it is far from unique in modern warfare. Meaning we should not dismiss opportunities for talks and hopefully a settlement/armistice, because we think we can't bear to deal with a supposedly uniquely evil regime/act*. I think it's quite likely they just have the same coldly calculating logic…
I don't see what that's got to do with it, we are put in the position of having to deal with people like this all the time. Just look at North Korea. Unfortunately it's a political reality because ousting these people isn't always feasible, and sometimes we can in some way limit the damage they're doing by making deals with them.
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Jammer is a massive radio beacon screaming into a void your position. So nice on paper but will work against you.
Only if it's at your position. If you have a few that aren't at your position, but somewhat close, you might be able to have effective jamming covering your position without having anything actually at your position.
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I still disagree. My point is not to diminish the brutality of the Russian assault in any material sense, but rather to say that it is far from unique in modern warfare. Meaning we should not dismiss opportunities for talks and hopefully a settlement/armistice, because we think we can't bear to deal with a supposedly uniquely evil regime/act*. I think it's quite likely they just have the same coldly calculating logic…
>Meaning we should not dismiss opportunities for talks and hopefully a settlement/armistice, because we think we can't bear to deal with a supposedly uniquely evil regime/act*. I don't see what that's got to do with it, we are put in the position of having to deal with people like this all the time. Just look at North Korea. Unfortunately it's a political reality because ousting these people isn't always feasible, an…
Just look at Iran, where the nuclear deal was unilaterally torn up by Trump, and the Democrats were so weak and cowed by perceptions of public opinion and the supposed cost in political capital it would take to undo that perception, that they went along with imposing sanctions regardless. So there are real dangers to over-vilification.
Arguably the same already happened to NK/DPRK as well — it’s definitely a brutal place now, but the US has been demonizing it even since when it was actually relatively-speaking more free and peaceful than the US supported dictatorship in the South/ROK.
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Only if it's at your position. If you have a few that aren't at your position, but somewhat close, you might be able to have effective jamming covering your position without having anything actually at your position.
So EM radiation guided loitering ammunition when?
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2016/webt...
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/04/06/raytheon-laser-cou...
https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/beam-wide-range-c...
Also- If you try to launch a COTS drone near troops with sophisticated air on station you are about to have a very bad day.
If there's anything I've learned from the conflict in Ukraine, as well as 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, it is that small-explosives drone usage has become a first-class citizen weaponry / tactic against ground troops. There's a daily stream of footage from Ukraine, where you see Russian ground troops getting bombed by DIY drones dropping grenades / mortar rounds / etc. Drones are also becoming invaluable tools as forwar…
I wonder how effective these drone attacks have actually been beyond being great for propaganda. For example compared to the more conventional indirect fire weapons.
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That’s a mighty small straw you’re splitting
The scale of Russian bombardment on Ukrainian civilian areas isn't small.