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The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

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Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#291

Post by ashdksnndck »

wnevets wrote: post #123
malfist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state. What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.

> What's the goal of the US/Iran war? To make certain people money by shorting the oil market. There is a reason why these "peace" deals are always announced on Fridays.

I never got the logic of this conspiracy theory. If you’re trying to make money insider trading off some events, wouldn’t you want markets to be open when the events occur? You’d like to be able to enter and exit your position immediately before and after any news breaks. Markets being closed when a deal is announced makes it less efficient to trade on that news.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#292

Post by bluGill »

chasd00 wrote: post #279
rawgabbit wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human is not piloting the drone. It patrols even if it lost communication due to jamming. It does need communication to ask the human for authorization to strike.

> It does need communication to ask the human for authorization to strike. well.. about that. "A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties" https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomou... this article says "one time test" but i, personally,…

You need human confirmation (for now) only when your side might be there. Tell your army not to go someplace and you can kill anything that is there.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#293

Post by Zancarius »

tencentshill wrote: post #203
silvestrov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle. It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.

Because it's a defensive war for their own homeland, not just a job.

This is true. The outcome is also terrifying.

The asymmetric warfare that has been enabled by inexpensive drone tech has so many vast implications that I'm not even sure we've seen every possible avenue this could explore. If either side isn't willing to completely obliterate civilian manufacturing centers, it enables long-term protracted warfare without an obvious end.

On the other hand, even obliterating civilian areas might not be an "end game" in its own right if external interests were to keep flooding the front lines with drones. FPV capabilities make conventional guidance systems a little less important, and while fiber has its weaknesses and wireless systems can be jammed, the psychological aspect of never quite knowing when a drone could be waiting in the midst of one's unit is deeply unsettling.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#294

Post by brabel »

Animats wrote: post #288
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if we're talking Ukraine, we have to talk Poland as it has been facilitating 90% of all Western military equipment, humanitarian aid, and crucial trade deliveries into the country. Poland is, of course, geopolitically positioned in a way that requires at least regional power status to survive if not thrive. A power vacuum in Poland is bad news for the security of Europe and Poland's immediate neighbors and region…

Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list. So they're glad to help Ukraine. Better than fighting the Russians on home territory. Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.

Even the most optimistic Russian does not think Russia will ever get beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya which is not much more than Russia currently occupies. You really think they will eventually march over Ukraine on to Warsaw?? That’s as likely as the exiled Chinese government in Taiwan taking over China.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#295

Post by ksd482 »

haunter wrote: post #24

> If history provides the theory, the ongoing war in Ukraine offers a brutal contemporary lesson: Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics, not when they run out of weapons. Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.

She specifically said "contemporary lesson" while citing the original WW2 lesson on logistics.

By contemporary lesson I assume she means similar lesson but more recent and keeping modern world/logistics in mind.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#296

Post by bluGill »

kakacik wrote: post #287
TSiege wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not necessarily true. Yes the strait of hormuz is technically in their territorial waters, but it has been recognized as an international water way until recently. Every country with a port on the other side of the strait is going to lose access. This might not be a tolerable situation to those allies of ours and they also have the ability to force the war to drag on. Maybe we walk and pull out from our bases…

Regognized by whom? This is very one sided view, obviously US sided. This kind of shit or excuses could not be pulled if we would be talking about gulf of mexico for example. US is not center of the world and rest of the world means >95% of mankind, rest of the world is pretty fed up with that unfair treatment and things are changing. Very slowly, but steadily.

Nearly everybody recognized it as an international waterway. Iran did not official but they acted liked it was international.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#297

Post by bluGill »

lenerdenator wrote: post #105
malfist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state. What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.

> What's the goal of the US/Iran war? It varies. Which is the problem. I can think of a few: 1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent. 2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their…

3 happened. The new boss is the old bosses son though so it wasn't a useful change.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#298

Post by icegreentea2 »

a34729t wrote: post #182

China has missed their window of opportunity, sadly. For the next big war, the US will simply not even need to air or sea to deliver weapons or supplies (see SpaceX's StarFall, of which 60x4 should fit into Starship). Per my calculations, the JDAM version of this will be cheaper than flying planes (and pilots) to drop bombs or cruise missiles. For small(er) wars, cheap drones break everything as they can destroy your…

Unclear how China will react to orbital/near-orbital launches that track near/over China in a hot war situation.

If I were China, I'd probably be backdoor signalling that they would consider these launches to be potential nuclear strikes to try to get them off the table.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#299

Post by mpyne »

asdff wrote: post #159
mpyne wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? A more appropriate question might be, where are the armored vehicles now in Russia? And as it turns out, they have indeed started adding armor to transport craft, including trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_armoured_train_Yenisei And despite Ukrainian strikes earlier, the Russian bridge over the Kerch strait remains standing and in use for some (not all) lo…

But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls? The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline ma…

> But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?

It's not as easy as it sounds to put the weight of ordnance required in the very tight windows that would be needed to actually cause more than cosmetic or minor damage to that bridge.

Ukraine did pull off a spectacularly successful operation to destroy a laden fuel truck while it was crossing the bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Crimean_Bridge_explosion)... Russia repaired the damage within months and simply redirected fuel transport to other means.

Russia also has dedicated a large amount of air defense and EM jamming resources to protect the bridge, which increases the difficulty of pulling something off for Ukraine.

For a long time Ukraine didn't have the types of weapons that would be needed to even attempt it outside of saboteur types of actions. Now they have some precise ordnance like Storm Shadow but even these weapons are not destructive enough to take the bridge down except in large quantities, and those are quantities they seem to have decided are best put towards other targets.

Ukraine has recently seen substantial success in finding better weapons, with drones that can engage in "medium-range" scenarios to close off the so-called land bridge from Russia to Crimea. These weapons have also helped in degrading Russia's own defenses, but with this in mind Ukraine may feel it best to leave the Kerch bridge standing for now to allow Russian occupiers to flee across the bridge back to Russia, since Ukraine has the northern land route through occupied territories under much more effective fire control than at any point since 2022.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#300

Post by selimthegrim »

37374848 wrote: post #233
selimthegrim wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember a onetime secular Jew named Leopold Weiss did a pretty good job.

Indeed, and this breed of arabist has been relentlessly pushed out of the department since the 1960s which is why we are in the mess we are in there's a devilish mess of evangelical wasps secular jews actual jews irishmen and not a single person who has read more than two lines about islam let alone convert into it islam has been treated like communism or socialism ie somthkng you can root out in exchange for walmart…

Uh he was a little more than an Arabist but point taken
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