#Video from ultra-right-wing broadcaster Sky #News reporting that #CIA director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced flight to Moscow to talk to Russia (specifically Sergey Naryshkin, head of the SVR), possibly over #Iran. Apparently the CIA is in charge of #USA #politics now? #Interview with Michael Clarke, who also discusses a new offensive by #Ukraine in the war, where they’re apparently able to use conventional armor again.
on 02026-08-26#video #toread about #Ukraine Special Operations Center OMEGA’s non-flying #weaponry and logistics #drones in #Ukraine, and OMEGA’s leader Oksana “Oksi” Volodymyrivna.
on 02026-08-18#video #toread about #Ukraine Special Operations Center OMEGA’s non-flying #weaponry and logistics #drones in #Ukraine, and OMEGA’s leader Oksana “Oksi” Volodymyrivna.
on 02026-08-18#News from 02023 about #Elmu turning off #Starlink at some earlier time to thwart an attack by #Ukraine: “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Reporter Brad Dress writes: “Musk was concerned about Russia responding to the naval attack with a nuclear weapon, Isaacson wrote in the book, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials begged him to turn the service back on, but he declined to do it for the Crimea incident.”
on 02026-08-10#news of #Ukraine using #weaponry #drones against a Russian refinery in Nizhnekamsk, 1200 km from the Ukraine border, killing 12 people and injuring 75.
on 02026-08-10#news from 02023 about Russia jamming #Starlink in #Ukraine, with the defense being to dig a 50 cm deep pit to put the antenna in
on 02026-07-25#video on #Ukraine #slaughterbots (#weaponry #drones) reaching Moscow en masse and hitting precision targets (including many oil refineries) starting May 17, instead of 90% getting shot down and the rest hitting random crap (not sure if I believe that). Apparently they have better intelligence and they’ve blown up more of Russia’s air defenses. Also operatives inside Russia are launching drones. Profile of Ukrainian Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, whose parents have now survived two Russian assassination attempts within Ukraine, using rocket launchers: reprisals against family members of key military officers are apparently routine in today’s form of war. They’re using “FP1” “Firepoint” winged drones vaguely similar to the Shahed: 1600km, 130 “pound” payload; and the jet-powered RS1 Bars: 800km, 200 “pound” payload. Russia has built a new air defense ring of 40 truss towers at some distance around Moscow.
on 02026-05-23#news #video of #Ukraine soldiers shooting at #drones with a CNN reporter, showing in detail a net-covered road and the tactics the soldiers use to survive while under drone attack
on 02026-05-22#video about how to avoid or defeat #weaponry #drones as an infantryman, from a guy who says he fought in #Ukraine amd Iraq for five years. #toread
on 02026-04-22“Large-scale exercise in Estonia - Ukrainian #drones wipe out entire NATO battalions” #Ukraine #weaponry #news
on 02026-04-22#video #toread showing #Ukraine #weaponry #drones flying over the city of Donetsk, very far from the front (50km? Much further than the usual 20km kill zone), where they’re starting to attack Russian military logistics on the roads. Not sure if these are so-called #Martians; those are supposed to be autonomous, and this looks like FPV.
on 02026-04-16“Ukrainian soldiers down $10 million Russian Mi-8 helicopter with a $500 drone” The #Ukraine ‘Baltika’ crew. #drones #weaponry #news
on 02026-04-14pro-#Ukraine propaganda #video says that al Jazeera says that in March there were 35351 Russian casualties, 96% from #drones #weaponry, a record body count perhaps due to the new so-called #Martians powered by #AI. In 02026 Ukraine projects building 7 million drones.
on 02026-04-13The Institute for the Study of War (#ISW) has weekly “Russian offensive campaign assessment” reports. #Ukraine
on 02026-04-13Russian warblogger commenting on the #Ukraine #slaughterbots #news, suggesting ways to tweak Russian tactics to deal better with #drones.
on 02026-04-13#news from last week: Russia calls the new #weaponry #drones from #Ukraine "Martians" or "Bumblebees": “The enemy has begun using new drones called ‘Martians,’ which, unfortunately, have a cruising speed of up to 300 kilometers/hour [186 miles / hour], no longer fly under operator guidance but are controlled by [#AI],” [Horlivko Russian mayor] Prikhodko said. “They are undetectable by electronic warfare systems, and drone detectors don’t spot them.” And Apti Alauidnov: “It appears they are jointly produced, Ukraine-Germany, Ukraine-France. They are modernized. They fly farther than the old ones.” Plausibly, though, these are not full-fledged #slaughterbots but just using LPD radio links to a teleoperator.
on 02026-04-13#video on #Frankenberg Mark 1 #weaponry against Russian #drones, a baguette-sized model rocket with an explosive warhead. From Estonia’s Frankenburg Technologies, headed by Kusti Salm, at a cost of US$50k a shot, first used by #Ukraine. Seems to be mostly stock photos and stock footage of Vladimir Putin walking around and flags flying outside the UN headquarters. From anti-Russia propaganda channel “The Military Show”.
on 02026-04-12talking-head #video on #weaponry #drones. Says #Ukraine front-line military units buy directly from manufacturers on an Amazon-like platform called “Brave One”. “The side that masters drones at scale, in doctrine, in training, and in organization will shape how wars are fought in the coming decades.” #slaughterbots
on 02026-04-12on #Ukraine, #Iran, #weaponry #drones, and putting things #underground to keep them safe. He proposes “rapidly bored shallow tunnels” because “Israel has destroyed only about 40 percent of Gaza’s tunnels after two and a half years of war.” He suggests cut-and-cover with prefab tunnel segments, which sounds ineffective to me.
on 02026-04-10#video #toread about #underground #dwelling #bunkers in #Ukraine
on 02026-04-04full 4-hour #video #interview with #Ethan-Thornton of #Mach-Industries, 3 weeks ago. The interviewer, Shawn Ryan, is this ex Navy SEAL dude who is into some bullshit about supernatural beings building the pyramids.
Thornton doesn’t really understand the Tragedy of the Commons, thinks it’s about companies making insufficient profits because of competition.
Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book.
His childhood summers were fixing old tractors and combines on the West Texas farm of his grandfather farm, who also had a hobby of building and flying experimental aircraft.
He got a visit from the ATF in high school after he started Mach at 16 because he built .50-calibre oxyhydrogen rifle #weaponry and had paid a machinist to build a better one.
“I think the stratosphere is sort of the most important military domain moving forward.”
Also as a teen he stole his mom’s credit card and bought a microscope and two sheep’s brains online to learn about neurosurgery.
He says he’s motivated by “individual sovereignty”, which is why he’s passionate about #Ukraine’s national sovereignty, but “China/Taiwan is orders of magnitude more important”.
“Decentralization” is also why Viper is vertical takeoff: so there’s no runway to bomb.
He envisions making up to 2 million Vipers and having them do everything a fighter jet can do, although right now it’s a kamikaze.
Ryan points out that decentralization means discarding the entire world military infrastructure of bases. Thornton points out that it means you can’t require a tanker to refuel. Containerized anti-ship missiles mean any container ship is a potential destroyer in disguise.
Thornton mentions Anduril’s "Eagle Eye".
At 2h48m Ryan presents him a rifle as a gift.
He says the company would not be in business today if he hadn’t moved from Austin to Huntington Beach, in Orange County, CA, where 95+% of the engineers he needed to hire lived (“niche RF, niche propulsion, niche GNC”).
Both Ryan and Thornton are fairly right-wing, but both agree that the US government has lost a lot of trust internationally and needs to regain it, in particular alluding to Trump and Vance’s shenanigans to increase European defense spending and to #Trump’s unpredictable #tariffs, but don’t see how that trust can be regained. Also interesting to hear Thornton express concern about and opposition to the “terrifying” “neofeudalist” planned obsolescence of iPhones, John Deere tractors, etc., which I normally think of as a left-wing concern.
on 02026-04-04#news #video from 60 Minutes about how #drones from the #Ukraine war have transformed war, and what that means for #Iran. Says Ukraine now produces 4 million drones a year. Profiles Roman Tkechenko’s #Tencor ground drone company, Air Logix, and its investors, former US Marines William McNulty and Lenore Caraffa, with their investment fund specializing in Ukrainian weapons (“UA1”?). The guy Ukraine has in charge of drones says they have about a one-week feedback time from designing a drone to incorporating feedback from its use in the field into the next generation of drone design. #weaponry
on 02026-04-04#Ukraine war atrocities by Russian troops in 02022. #human-rights
on 02026-03-17“BMW E38 7-series MLRS, 2025. In #Ukraine, a third-generation (1995–2001) 7 series has been fitted with a 122mm Grad rocket to create a multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS).” #weaponry
on 02025-12-18#video on comedian #Uncle-Roger who has been canceled (twice!) by #China, in January 02021 on Weibo and Bilibili for collaborating with Mike Chen because he was “anti-CCP” and also #Falun-Gong, but apologizing for that got him canceled on Twitter, and then two years later (02023?) he got canceled again for making a joke in Boston about how he had to say China was a very good country because they were listening through Huawei phones, so his social credit score would go up, and then joked that Taiwan was not a real country. This resulted in all four of his Chinese social media accounts getting banned. Also he got cancelled on Twitter for making a joke when Russia invaded #Ukraine, and in Singapore when he “talked shit” about the food. This is a “podcast for the canceled” called "triggernometry".
on 02025-11-05winners of the Astral Codex Ten #non-book-review contest: Joan of Arc, Alpha School, and the #Ukraine war, which has been deleted
on 02025-11-05#video by "UC Military News" about what #drones did for #Ukraine in October #toread
on 02025-11-05#video of #drones killing Russians in pro-#Ukraine propaganda #toread
on 02025-11-04#video on #Ukraine’s HUR spy agency attacking Pokrovsk today with troops that hopped out of a troop transport helicopter just above the ground, denying FPV drone operators line-of-sight as well as denying SAMs radar lock. But the video is just a bunch of stock photos, in fact the same stock photos over and over again. #Plonk to “J&J’s military report”.
on 02025-11-04pro-#Ukraine propaganda #video from yesterday about mostly tank battles with a bit of #drones and artillery #weaponry. Every Ukrainian tank round fired hits its target, usually completely destroying it, a Bradley IFV destroys a Russian tank, etc.
on 02025-11-03#video on #weaponry for #Ukraine, NAD of Sweden’s US$5000 warhead-less infrared-guided missile "Kreuger" 100, because Lockheed Martin makes 500 US$3.7M Patriot PAC-3 missiles per year, while Russia makes Geran “flying lawnmower” #drones for US$30k to US$100k and sends 100–500 per night. Russia’s Orlan-10 is US$87k to US$120k. The Kreuger 100XR is longer-range and does carry a warhead. It’s propeller-driven, but with just one electric propeller at the rear, plus forward and rear canards. “Civilian configurations” (?) reach 270km/hour but only 4000m altitude.
on 02025-11-03#video on new anti-#Shahed #weaponry #drones from #Ukraine, battery-powered quadcopters with 500g of explosives for US$595, using a DJI digital transmission module. Displays some captured Russian drones.
on 02025-10-07#Ukraine #politics disturbing account from a foreign volunteer
on 02025-10-07#RFU #video from today on #Ukraine news on the front between Dolyna and Lyman; Ukraine is bombing Russian pontoon bridges with GBU39 #weaponry despite GPS jamming; artillery fire suppressed bridge replacement. FPV #drones are playing a supporting role.
on 02025-10-02#video #toread from three years ago about #Ukraine salvaging Russian tank machine guns for use as #weaponry
on 02025-10-02#Kissinger #video from 02022 commenting on, perhaps, the #Ukraine war. #toread
on 02025-09-10#history #video #news (PBS MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour) from December 5, 01994 over #NATO expanding to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Yeltsin opposed it at the CSCE Summit in Budapest. Jack Matlock (former #USA ambassador to the USSR): “The question is not if but when.” #Kissinger: “The Russians are not unhappy about the timing; they are unhappy about the fact [of NATO expansion].” Kissinger thought the expansion should happen as soon as possible, while Matlock didn’t, but both agreed that the Russians were very unhappy. Kissinger: “If we are reluctant to antagonize the Russians today when they’re weak, it is an illusion to think that somewhere three, four years down the road, we can suddenly move in that direction when they’re stronger.” Later, he says, “I don’t see why [adding Poland] should provoke them especially since we could make military, we have, for example, in Eastern Germany we have military arrangements whereby no non-German troops go beyond the Elbe.” I suspect those arrangements no longer exist. “We could make similar arrangements for Poland that no non-Polish troops will be stationed on Polish territory.” Kissinger paraphrases Yeltsin: “Anything east of that yellow-shaded area [Poland, Slovakia, Hungary] was connected to Russia as blood brothers.” Interviewer: “That’s Belarus and #Ukraine.” Kissinger: “...and strongly implied that no outside influence was permissible there.” More shockingly, Kissinger said, “I don’t think the Russian situation will ever become a clear-cut military threat.” Matlock: “There is one other factor we seem to be forgetting, and we did (though it was not a legally binding assurance) we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a united Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward.” So that wasn’t just something Putin invented. Kissinger (who at one point slips and refers to things being subject to “negotiation with the Soviets”) comes off as a terrible liar. Matlock: “It will definitely, as things stand now, leave the impression in Russia that the West is cutting them off and moving the line closer to their border. (...) the impact would be very negative in Moscow, in Russian politics, and would not be a service to those who want democratic institutions.”
on 02025-09-10#Poland #Ukraine #politics #news
on 02025-09-10#video #news claiming #Poland just shot down a bunch of Russian Shahed-style #drones deep inside its airspace, which were shot down by Polish, German, Dutch, and Italian forces (operating out of Estonia), and #NATO has convened a special meeting. Russia questions whether the drones are of Russian origin. #Ukraine #politics
on 02025-09-10#news conference with Zelenskyy and Macron: #Ukraine will have troops from 20 countries, apparently including France, as a security guarantee against Russia — “as soon as there is a ceasefire”. 35 countries in the “Coalition of the Willing”/“Coalition des Volontaires”, 26 with already-formalized contributions. #politics
on 02025-09-04#video on #Ukraine #drones #weaponry, which it said is largely made by Vyriy and the Vampire’s maker Skyfall. Says dropping 10kg TM62 anti-tank mines onto tanks, and also dropping heavy bombs from drones, is a “warfare first”. The Vampire (Baba Yaga) can carry them 10km. Says the Donetsk battlefield is “dominated by FPV drones on both sides”. The most popular ground drone is Ratel’s 35kg-capacity Ratel S or “Honey Badger”.
on 02025-08-30#news #video of #John-Mearsheimer saying NATO expansion provoked the Russian invasion of #Ukraine
on 02025-08-12#video of interviews on the #Russia street about the #Ukraine war
on 02025-08-09#Weaponry #news from April. Another repetition of the NYT’s claim that in #Ukraine, “#drones caused 70 percent of battlefield injuries or deaths in 2024, supplanting artillery,” inspiring #Burkina-Faso, etc. “[#Turkey] is Africa’s top supplier, with a total of 32 agreements, 28 of which have occurred since 2021. Türkiye has succeeded by appealing to the desire of countries across Africa to acquire affordable, modern weapons outside the supply chains of major technological powers. Israel, the #UAE, and #Iran have similarly expanded their reach on the continent via the supply of drones.
On the demand side, #Nigeria (18 acquisitions), Algeria (15), Ethiopia (12), and Morocco (11) are Africa’s top drone seekers. (...) Enterprises in nine African countries (Algeria, #Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, #Nigeria, #South-Africa, Sudan, and #Tunisia) now produce military drones, supplying approximately 12 percent of Africa’s overall drone market. South Africa, the continent’s longest-standing drone producer, has manufactured unmanned military systems since the 1970s. #ENOVA Robotics, a Tunisian company, is exporting 50 of its ground security robots to the United States.”
on 02025-06-17“#Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in #Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say. (...) drones rule the battlefield. They have far surpassed conventional arms as the war’s most lethal #weaponry. (...) The war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers in all, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. But drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say. (...) Of the 31 highly sophisticated Abrams tanks that the United States provided Ukraine in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, disabled or captured, with many incapacitated by drones, senior Ukrainian officials said. Nearly all of the others have been taken off the front lines, they added. (...) Ukrainian officials said they had made more than one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones in 2024. Russia claims it can churn out 4,000 every day. Both countries say they are still scaling up production, with each aiming to make three to four million drones in 2025. (...) Ukraine has followed suit, firing more drones last year than the most common type of large-caliber artillery shells. The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, says Ukraine is now pursuing a “robots first” military strategy.
However effective they may be, the drones fall far short of meeting all of Ukraine’s war needs and cannot simply replace the demand for conventional weapons, commanders warn. Heavy artillery and other long-range weapons remain essential for many reasons, they say, including protecting troops and targeting command-and-control outposts or air-defense systems. ”
on 02025-06-17#video from May 19: #interview with #drones developer Sergey Tovkach from #Russia on how #weaponry from #Ukraine is far better than what the US and even China have, and now 70% of fatalities on the battlefield are from drones. “A special thanks to our Western partners, because where else could we have trained on so much of your equipment? You delivered it straight to the front, and we got to study it up close. We learned all the weak points. We learned exactly where to strike. (...) There isn’t a single Western drone that’s proven itself effective in this conflict.” He claims #China makes military gear that doesn’t survive being tossed out of a truck, “like toys”. Ukraine barely uses Chinese chips in their drones, but Russia’s have to be all Chinese. Talks about mine-laying drones (“in use for about a year and a half now”), “sleeper/ambush drones” (same time frame, Ukrainians first — drones playing possum, pretending to be “a real trophy”), and drones dropping caltrops welded from rebar. “Same [ambush tactics] with drones placed on rooftops or hilltops overlooking roads (...) when the vehicles come, the drone just takes off, flies a short distance, and hits its target. That whole tactic really took off with the rise of fiber optic drones,” because they don’t need to burn 5–10W to transmit the video feed. Russian operators now wind up used fiber-optic cables on a cordless drill to avoid giving away their position. “The Orbit [Russian remote piloting] system. (...) The Ukrainians have been using radio relays and internet bridges for a long time already. (...) #Starlink is the holy grail. (...) Take away Starlink and Ukraine’s entire fleet of naval drones disappears overnight. (...) Why doesn’t Russia have naval drones? Well, we do have the boats and, but we don’t have Starlink.” But he says Starlink’s #latency is too high for FPV drone piloting. Baba Yaga or “Vampire” drones dropping antitank mines with 6–8kg of TNT have been very effective; Russia is ramping up two factories to produce its own equivalent.
on 02025-06-17#news #video of “massive” attack on Kyiv, #Ukraine, killing 9 people with 4 not found yet
on 02025-04-23#news #video from yesterday about two people from #China fighting in #Ukraine and captured by Ukrainian troops
on 02025-04-09#news #video from today saying #Ukraine is declining #Trump’s peace deal with Russia. #politics
on 02025-03-31#news #video of talking-head and stock footage about #rare-earths, which #Ukraine doesn’t actually have. Also the global rare-earths market is only US$5 billion a year. #politics
on 02025-03-31#video interviewing US veterans fighting in #Ukraine on differences from Afghanistan and Iraq
on 02025-03-19#USA #Fox #news #video on #Trump revoking the legal #immigration status of 240k people who fled #Ukraine. #politics
on 02025-03-06#video extensive footage of #Ukraine #drones #weaponry dropping bombs on individual Russian soldiers, mostly in trenches, killing them. Also includes footage of house-to-house fighting in Shcheribivka (?). Lots of heat-vision footage. Also includes footage of tank-to-tank (or IFV-to-tank?) combat. By #Sinyor-Media.
on 02025-03-04#video #news on #Ukraine doing the “first all-robot assault” on a ground position at Lyptsi, near Hlyboka, by the 13th National Guard brigade. Includes footage from “Army TV - Ukrainian Military Channel”. #toread #weaponry #drones
on 02025-03-04#video on Norway’s Holtback Bunkers Corp. cutting off fuel supplies to the #USA military until #Trump leaves office, following his criticism of Zelenskyy. #Ukraine #news
on 02025-03-02#video on #Ukraine attempts to recapture Kotlyne from the Russians. Mostly just maps #politics
on 02025-03-02#video #toread about #Ukraine "Sea Baby" maritime drone #weaponry which supposedly has “sent Russia’s Black Sea fleet packing”.
on 02025-03-01#video of #Ukraine Magyar Birds #drones destroying Russian #weaponry while controlled over fiber-optic cables. Lots of purported battlefield footage with a voiceover with a native US accent reading a script written by somebody who doesn’t speak English very well; AI? Several instances of FPV drones piercing howitzer barrels with strapped-on RPGs, lots of FPV footage, some heat vision. By #Sinyor-Media.
on 02025-03-01#news: the #Economist discusses the possibilities of European self-defense. “There are approximately 230 Russian and Ukrainian brigades in #Ukraine, though most are under-strength. Many European countries would struggle to produce a single combat-capable brigade each. (...) Europe has impressive air forces, with a lot of modern jets. But those jets do not have a meaningful stockpile of munitions capable of destroying enemy air defences or striking distant targets on land or in the air[.] (...) “This”, pronounced Mr Merz on February 24th, “is really five minutes to midnight for Europe.”” #Trump #politics
on 02025-02-28#news #video of #Zelenskyy and #Trump yelling at each other in front of the US media in the Oval Office today. #Ukraine #politics
on 02025-02-28#video on Australian #PPDS #drones: cardboard, or waxed-paper foamboard sandwich, airplane-shaped, “origami of death”, being used in #Ukraine for #weaponry. 24 shipped flat-packed in a pizza box, front propeller, catapult launch, straight wings attached with rubber bands, 5.3 “pounds” empty, 6.6 “pounds” payload, 37 “miles” per hour, 75 “miles” range. Unit price speculated to be between $670 and $3350, an oddly precise upper bound suggesting wankery around exchange rates. It’s claimed that the MiG-29 and four Su-30s destroyed at the Kursk airbase were destroyed with these drones at well over their nominal range. #slaughterbots
on 02025-02-27#drones carrying PKM #weaponry in #Ukraine #video
on 02025-02-27#CNN #news #video: “We [#USA] are on the path out of #NATO (...) we are aligned with what has always been NATO’s principal threat. (...) I would say 95%+ of NATO’s planning during the Cold War and since then has been concerned about a Russian attack. That is the fundamental motivating factor why the alliance was created and why it still exists today. And we have sided now in this vote with NATO’s principal adversary.” —John Bolton. #politics. The “and since then” and “why it still exists” are deliberate and very significant from my point of view; it’s a fatal counter to any argument that NATO isn’t really an anti-Russian alliance. #Ukraine
on 02025-02-26#news yes, Roger #Waters did address the UN Security Council about #Ukraine. But the speech reported on here is not the speech in the YouTube video linked above, but rather a speech given two years earlier. #politics
on 02025-02-20#video #news of Roger #Waters addressing the UN Security Council (!?) about #Ukraine, quoting Smedley Butler. #politics
on 02025-02-20#video on #Ukraine #weaponry, saying they passed Zelenskyy’s target of manufacturing a million #drones in the year 2024 — in February. Mostly about “cope cages” and “turtle #tanks”. From pro-Ukraine propaganda outlet “Military Show”.
on 02025-02-12#video #news of #UK defense minister Healey listing #weaponry sent to #Ukraine last year: “10000 #drones” is the only thing worth mentioning. Hegseth says #Trump’s approach to the war is that the war must end. “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. (...) The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. (...) As part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.” Not sure what he thinks about Donetsk and Luhansk. #politics
on 02025-02-12#video of #pmarca saying it’s “morning again” in #USA #politics due to #Trump, 74 minutes. I didn’t realize Al Gore sponsored the legislation that created NSFNET; I thought his advocacy started with the com-priv era.
He mentions the end of Chevron deference, which he argues means that executive agencies should abandon their quasi-legislative functions. He also questions the idea of “independent agencies” in the executive branch, like the FTC and NRC. The interviewer, the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson, argues that the CFPB's director not being fireable by the president is “unconstitutional on the face of it”, prefiguring the Slaughter verdict (I’m writing these notes in 02026).
Cites #Yarvin approvingly at 25'54" saying that we’re 80 years into FDR’s personal monarchy.
Also mentions #Elmu has been “living at” Mar-a-Lago.
Also mentions the #history of Nixon’s “Project Independence”, which I hadn’t heard of, to build 1000 #nuclear #energy power stations in the US, which turns out to be at best a very incomplete description of Project Independence.
Describes #Anduril’s original business plan as “We have to invest in this company, and his business plan is to hunt Mexicans at the southern border in 2016. And we’re just like, oh, God, we just basically have a heart attack.” So Andreessen Horowitz didn’t invest, and Trump didn’t want Anduril to do it, so they switched to military systems, which became accepted in Silicon Valley with the tragedy in #Ukraine.
Robinson claims that the US’s “only sustainable advantage over the Chinese is going to be technological innovation”, since they’re more numerous and richer, which doesn't make sense to me — how are they richer if they’re dumber, as he’s implying? Pmarca doesn’t disagree, citing the Pentagon’s new COO, Steve Feinberg, as someone who can make this happen.
At 56'40" he says the Ukrainian sea drones are built out of commercial jetskis.
At 60'40" pmarca makes the very reasonable points that productivity growth in the US has been low since about 01970, and that low growth creates zero-sum economics, which creates zero-sum politics, “where the only way for anybody to get anything is to take it away from somebody else.”
on 02025-01-29#Kurzgesagt #news #video about #Ukraine, etc. Is the world getting more peaceful?
on 02024-12-10#news #interview #video yesterday with Sergey Lavrov, 81 minutes, about the #Ukraine war, by the notorious right-wing ideologue from the US, which I linked yesterday from the ideologue’s channel; this is the channel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.
on 02024-12-06#news #interview #video today with Sergey Lavrov, 80 minutes, about the #Ukraine war, by a notorious right-wing ideologue from the US, discussing #Oreshnik
on 02024-12-05Russia's overseas US$300 billion of frozen reserves happened when it invaded #Ukraine in 02022
on 02024-11-29#news #video saying last night at least 17 Russian drones hit #Ukraine out of a total of 188, of which 76 were shot down and 95 lost from radar tracking for unknown reasons. Also 4 Iskander-M ballistic missiles were fired, but apparently no more #Oreshnik missiles. Odessa recently had a multi-day power and drinking-water outage, and attack-induced blackouts are common across Ukraine.
on 02024-11-26right-wing #news #video claiming #UK export controls to Russia over the #Ukraine war have been ineffective because the same exported goods are just flowing in through neighboring countries in the Caucasus and central Asia such as Georgia and “what we would see as the Stans”, while UK luxury car exports to those same countries have “skyrocketed”, “particularly #Azerbaijan”. #Clickbait headline promises information on an announcement of new sanctions, but no such information is available. Fuck you, Sky News.
on 02024-11-26#news of #Ukraine #SCALP missiles “the French equivalent of Britain’s Storm Shadow”: “Ukraine could fire French long-range missiles into Russia “in the logics of self-defense,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the BBC.” #toread
on 02024-11-24#news #video by Russian propaganda mouthpieces Danny Haiphong and Scott Ritter on the #Oreshnik strikes on the former Yuzhmash factory in #Ukraine; says there were six releases of six submunitions each. Mentions SCALP, the French missile. Pure talking-head filler
on 02024-11-24right-wing #USA propaganda #news #video saying South Korea is thinking about getting involved in the #Ukraine war #politics
on 02024-11-24#news #video from CNN criticizing Biden’s #USA #politics policy change on #Ukraine
on 02024-11-24#Karaganov “has been Presidential Advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. He is considered close to Putin and Sergey Lavrov. (...) has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998, and served on the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also been Deputy Director of the Institute of Europe at the USSR (now Russian) Academy of Sciences since 1983.” I guess that means he’s been a major architect of Russian foreign policy since literally Andropov. #politics #Russia #Ukraine
on 02024-11-22#TRT #news says Erdogan calls for “restraint”, seeming “very, very concerned” and saying NATO “needs to prepare”, and “opposes #Ukraine’s use of US long-range missiles”, which #Turkey calls a “mistake”. Also an interview with Sergey #Karaganov, advisor to Putin. He also says that under [circumstances I didn’t understand] the #USA and Western Europe would “get a nuclear response”. Former Turkish diplomat Gulru Gezer says she’s getting “chills on my spine” from the US and Russian rhetoric from the other panelists. Karaganov: “The problem is two-pronged. One is to win the victory in Ukraine over the West, not over Ukraine. [The] West has to be defeated. Second, the third world war could be avoided.” He accidentally called Putin “president Yeltsin” at one point. #video #politics
on 02024-11-22#Deutsche-Welle says the #Oreshnik is both 2.5–3 kilometers per second and ten times the speed of sound, quoting Vladimir Putin! Apparently he isn’t really up on modern science. #Ukraine #news #video
on 02024-11-22#MSNBC #news #video on #Oreshnik developments with Michael Froman, the chairman of the Council for Foreign Relations and former USTR, who says #Ukraine will demand NATO membership as a condition of surrender, which seems like it would be unaccetpable to Russia. #USA #politics
on 02024-11-22Russian propaganda channel WION clarifies that the #Oreshnik was “2.5-3 kilometers per second” which would be mach 7.5-9 at sea level. Dmitry Babich (foreign editor, kp.ru news) blames the war on the West’s “gender ideology, woke ideology” #Ukraine #news #video
on 02024-11-22“NATO to meet [Tuesday] after new Russian missile strike” (#news today, but about the Dnipro #Oreshnik missile strike yesterday) #Ukraine #politics #video
on 02024-11-22“Ucrania pide a EEUU misiles Tomahawk que puedan alcanzar a Moscú” #Ukraine #politics #news #video 2500km range, #nuclear capable
on 02024-11-22“ATTACK ON THE US: Russia reportedly threatens US defense base in Poland” #Ukraine #politics #news #video #Oreshnik
on 02024-11-22“Vladimir Putin warns West as Russia hits #Ukraine with new missile” #news #politics #video of almost purely talking-head filler #Oreshnik
on 02024-11-22#news #video about #Putin saying the ballistic missile that hit #Ukraine wasn’t an #ICBM but a medium-range missile. #politics #history #Oreshnik
on 02024-11-21#news #video about #Ukraine getting hit by an #ICBM #politics #history #Oreshnik
on 02024-11-21#news Russia launches first #ICBM used in war in history, but it launched it at Dnipro, #Ukraine (from Astrakhan) and without #nuclear weapons. #politics #history #Oreshnik
on 02024-11-21“Russia says #Ukraine attacked it using U.S. long-range missiles, signals it’s ready for #nuclear response” #news #politics
on 02024-11-20#news #video State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller tonight about #ATACMS missile strikes on Russia: “No, I’m not gonna confirm it. I am not gonna confirm that report. #Ukraine, of course, is free to speak to what they have or have not done, but I’m not gonna confirm at this point any US policy change.” #USA #politics
on 02024-11-19#crossbow #weaponry in #Ukraine also discussing #drones a bit. “Major European armies still fielded breast-plated heavy cavalry regiments at the outbreak of World War I.”
on 02024-11-17A Russian explains why Russia invaded #Ukraine.
on 02024-11-13#video #toread about #Ukraine #drones #weaponry from last week
on 02024-10-30The #Linux kernel mailing list thread removing Russian maintainers due to #USA #politics and the #Ukraine invasion. Will Russia and China fork Linux? #LKML
on 02024-10-25#video from today about the #Ukraine loss of Ukrainsk near the Donetsk capital #toread
on 02024-09-18#video #toread about #Ukraine invading Belgorod as well as Kursk, from a pro-Ukraine propaganda channel #politics
on 02024-09-16#video #news about people in Russia getting punished for criticizing the #Ukraine war
on 02024-09-16#video from three days ago about #Anduril’s Barracuda cruise missile #weaponry #drones. #Palmer-Luckey describes #China as an “expansionist dictatorship” and claims that Anduril’s autonomous drones in #Ukraine have been crucial to destroying Russian hardware. He pronounces it ['ænd ɚ ,ɪl]. “I don't think the United States needs to be the world police. We need to be the world gun store. (...) Ukraine has really exposed this weakness in the United States' foreign policy strategy, where we say we support all of these people, but they look and say, ‘They can’t even manufacture the basics, like artillery shells or, you know, small missiles.’” They just raised money on a US$14 billion valuation to build “Arsenal One, a five million square foot factory that we’re building”. Refuses to comment on possible deployments in Israel, but says, “We have a very strong relationship with #Taiwan,” and says Anduril was recently sanctioned by the CPC.
on 02024-09-16#video from yesterday #toread about #weaponry #drones on the Pokrovsk front in #Ukraine
on 02024-09-16#video from four days ago: #Ukraine #news #toread from #Azov brigade (still with the damn wolf hook) on an offensive in Luhansk
on 02024-09-16#video of a Russian POW from Kursk on #Ukraine state TV UATV
on 02024-09-16#video on #Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk Oblast of Russia; seems like they’ve lost substantial ground to the Russians in the last week.
on 02024-09-16apparently Blinken landed in Kyiv, #Ukraine, about 5:37 AM GMT-3, which is about 4 hours ago. #politics
on 02024-09-11#video today on Russians retaking Snagost (in Kursk Oblast) and other villages from #Ukraine three days ago, mostly sourced from Russian warbloggers. Footage of captured Ukrainian soldiers. It’s believed that Blinken will visit Kyiv and authorize Ukraine to use ATACMS within Russia — today? Also Russia took Vodiane, in the south of Ukraine, and Hrodivka/Grodovka, and have entered Ukrainsk from three directions. #politics
on 02024-09-11#Ukraine’s 01940s ultranationalist leader Bandera, who organized pogroms; “Banderovets” is still used pejoratively in Russia for Ukrainians. #history
on 02024-09-10#video of Scott Ritter #interview predicting imminent surrender of #Ukraine, as of two days ago, and its nonexistence this winter. Says Russia just recaptured the original 02014 line of demarcation in the Donbas, and almost the entire Cabinet resigned yesterday. Again Ritter says “de-Nazification”, which makes it especially interesting that he says that Russia is “seeking to destroy the rules-based international order, and it’s going to do that through the strengthening of the #BRICS forum,” which apparently Türkiye has just entered, and “Iran and Saudi Arabia are already in, so is UAE”. (Türkiye did indeed just enter, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are in.) But also he seems to be saying that Russia and China are trying to get India to join BRICS, which makes no sense. Ritter predicts that NATO will collapse when Türkiye pulls out. #politics
on 02024-09-10#video of Scott Ritter #interview predicting imminent surrender of #Ukraine, that Europe is “disintegrating before our eyes” because of an immigration crisis (?), the EU and NATO will collapse, etc. Seems like pro-Putin propaganda? Uncritically uses the propaganda words “Banderist” (Banderovets) and “de-Nazification”. And something about how countries like Germany wanted to “derisk” by removing their supply chains from #China, but Volkswagen was losing money everywhere else. And apparently the #USA is now in an arms race with China? #politics
on 02024-09-10#video with Yanis #Varoufakis about #USA #politics, #China, #WeChat, and how the US in #history didn’t go bankrupt when it had a trade deficit because of Bretton Woods (?). His book is "Techno Feudalism". Cites the US and EU confiscating US$450 billion in overseas Russian holdings due to the #Ukraine war as a pivotal moment that forced people everywhere to look for alternatives.
on 02024-09-10#Ukraine #drones hit Moscow, or a city near Moscow, killing one person and injuring three. Also so-called “Dragon” drones dumping thermite on a forest. #politics
on 02024-09-10#news #video on an Iranian-made Russian drone that was shot down (?) in NATO member Lithuania on Saturday after launching from Belarus targeted at #Ukraine. #drones #politics
on 02024-09-10#video about Queen Hornet #drones carrying AK-74 gun #weaponry in #Ukraine from the maker “Wild Hornets”. Mentions that they’re also used as signal repeaters. Also, a #Baba-Yaga firing an automatic rifle at the ground. Also Russia has at least tested Molot Aero drones firing AK-74s. And the Georgian Legion fired an RPG-7 from one of their drones.
on 02024-09-10Terminal Autonomy’s AQ400 Scythe #drones have a range of 750km and are being made from wood “in former furniture factories in #Ukraine. (...) Mr Serra-Martins, a former Australian Army Royal Engineer, set up the company with his Ukrainian co-founder, backed by US finance. It is one of at least three companies now producing drones in Ukraine at scale. (...) Terminal Autonomy’s Scythe drone uses visual positioning – navigating its course and examining the terrain by Artificial Intelligence. There is no pilot involved. (...) What you’re seeing now is like nothing compared to what you’ll see by the end of the year.” #weaponry The article also covers #Palantir’s involvement, including route planning for the drones.
on 02024-09-10#video #toread about an interview with a sniper in #Ukraine
on 02024-09-07CNN News #video saying #Ukraine blew up an oil refinery near Moscow with #drones last weekend (shown in cellphone video), Russia having shot down 160 of the drones of the attack wave. Another cellphone video shows some kind of industrial facility on fire in Konakovo in Tver, reportedly an energy facility, about 500–600 km away from the line of battle. Ukraine hadn’t done this before because its long-range missiles had been supplied by Western allies who forbade it. Also discusses #Durov’s arrest in #France and Russia’s concerns about Telegram opsec — the Russian military has been “instructed to stop using Telegram”. #weaponry #politics
on 02024-09-07#video from two weeks ago on Western tank #weaponry in #Ukraine, such as the Kampfpanzer Leopard 1 with its 70mm RHA and rifled 105mm gun; the US$6 million, 70-tonne Leopard 2 with its smoothbore 120mm gun and composite armor, and at least 130 deployed to Ukraine, at least 32 damaged or lost so far (8 of these being repaired); the Stridsvagn 122+, a Leopard 2, with 10 deployed and 7 lost; Britain’s 70-tonne Challenger 2, with its 120mm rifled gun, 14 deployed and one lost so far, the first Challenger 2 lost to enemy fire anywhere in the world (the comments say a second one has just been lost in the Kursk offensive); and the 66.8-tonne turbine-powered M1 Abrams, with its 120mm smoothbore gun, 31 deployed, 10 lost. Ukraine has lost 857 tanks so far: 585 destroyed, 72 damaged, 66 abandoned, 134 captured. Their T-64 tanks were more useful for minefields because they had mine rolles, unlike the Western tanks. They say the Polish PT-91 Twardy, an upgraded T-72, has been the most useful. But somehow the video also says that the Western tanks are intimidating, advanced, and scare Russian soldiers with just the sound of their engines, even though it sounds like it’s the T-64s and T-72s that have been most useful. “#Drones are actually the reason many military experts believe tanks have been made obsolete in modern warfare, at least until the technology and tactics catch up,” and Russian drones took out at least five of the 10 Abrams tanks Ukraine has lost, prompting to remove them from the front lines. #politics
on 02024-09-05#video #toread from five days ago saying the #Ukraine front in Donbas is collapsing #politics
on 02024-09-05#video #toread about "UGVs" in #Ukraine, ground #weaponry #drones
on 02024-09-05#video #toread about #Ukraine “vampire” rocket #weaponry attacking Russian city
on 02024-09-05#video #toread from two days ago about Kursk defensive lines. #Ukraine
on 02024-09-05Sun #video of #Ukraine drone destroying other #weaponry #toread
on 02024-09-05#video saying that the #NATO #Ukraine council is holding an emergency meeting in the wake of Russia’s bombings of Ukraine on Monday and Tuesday.
on 02024-08-28#WSJ #video on #Shahed (131, 136, and 238) #drones from #Iran in #Ukraine, described as “cheap”. The 238 has jet propulsion, but the 136 uses a four-cylinder piston engine (after an initial rocket boost) and has 1500 “miles” (2400km) of range, 11.5 “feet” of length (3.5m), 441 “pounds” of weight (200kg plus spurious precision) with a 100-“pound” payload, and US$50000 of production cost, 1/600 of the Reaper. Moscow plans to manufacture 6000 of them by 02025. #weaponry
on 02024-08-28#video from two weeks ago on swarm #weaponry #drones likely to be deployed en masse in #Ukraine. Mostly talking about optical navigation by waypoints for terminal guidance to defeat GPS jamming, though, rather than swarming; emphasis is on attacking tanks, Russian reconaissance drones, and in one case a helicopter. Says Ukraine “may well be ahead” of Russia, weakly contradicting other recent reporting. #politics
on 02024-08-28#video #toread on Belarus possibly invading #Ukraine #politics
on 02024-08-28#video about a couple in #Ukraine who left Beryslav, near Kherson, after kamikaze #drones bombed their house. Now they’re scared of thunder and wasps. The claim is that there’s no military presence in Beryslav, which has shrunk from 11000 people to about 1000 after hundreds of drone casualties, including 16 deaths. Contrary to what Business Insider’s Russian deserter said, the civilians believed they’d be safer going out at night, when the drones couldn’t see them; in one case a drone blew up an ambulance. It says Russia “quickly caught up” to Ukraine’s initial lead in drone #weaponry. The only hypothesis offered by the Ukrainians is that Russian drone operators are using Beryslav for target practice. A Russian post on Telegram says there are no civilians there, so they’re destroying vehicles to deprive the enemy of mobility. #DeutscheWelle
on 02024-08-27#video about Russian soldiers fighting in #Ukraine. Interview with an escaped soldier by #Business-Insider. Makes it sound like the no-man’s-land trench warfare of WWI. He talks a fair bit about #drones, saying that the “night birds” all use thermal cameras, and also describes how he amputated a fellow soldier’s gangrenous arm with an axe. Also, accidentally crawling over corpses trying to hide from a drone. Later he crawled off the battlefield, unable to walk, after getting a grenade from a “night bird”. He relates an incident of two of his companymates getting executed for insubordination (“zeroed out”) because they refused to go to a post where “Baba Yaga” was “fucking them up real bad”. On another occasion he was going to be executed and dumped in a mass grave for supposedly deserting.
on 02024-08-27#video on #weaponry #drones in #Ukraine, and in particular Ukrainian company Saker’s autonomous target identification software, which has reportedly already destroyed Russian targets in autonomous mode. And then #Anduril. “The cost of killing is getting scarily low.”
on 02024-08-27#video on #Ukraine invading Belgorod, just a #NIT voiceover on stock footage. Video is trash. #politics
on 02024-08-27#video including a #Ukraine tank invading Kursk getting hit by “Lancet” drone #weaponry and a US-made M1 Abrams tank on Russian soil
on 02024-08-27#video on #Ukraine #drones #weaponry being caught up with by Russia. Says the Russians have five times as many drones on the front lines, though the number of Ukrainian companies licensed to sell the government drones has risen from 7 “last year” (02022) to 70 “this” year (02023). #politics
on 02024-08-27#video #toread on #drones and #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-08-27“In the two years since mysterious explosions hit the Nord Stream gas pipelines, both #Ukraine and Russia have denied any involvement in the attacks. German authorities on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian suspect over the 2022 sabotage.” They rented a sailing yacht called the Andromeda. #politics
on 02024-08-14#video saying there’s an arrest warrant out in Germany for Vladimir Z., citizen of #Ukraine but based in Poland, for bombing the Nord Stream pipeline with a yacht hired in Rostock (?). #politics
on 02024-08-14#Ukraine made a bomb with some hydrogen and a ground drone in Vovchansk. It was super effective. #politics
on 02024-08-14Financial Times coverage of #Ukraine’s drone strike last night on Russian airfields #politics
on 02024-08-14#Ukraine attacked four Russian airbases with long-range drones last night, in Kursk, Voronezh, and Nizhniy Novgorod #politics
on 02024-08-14another #video from today about #Ukraine advancing into Russia #toread #politics
on 02024-08-14#video from today about #Ukraine advancing into Russia #toread #politics
on 02024-08-14#video from CNN on #Ukraine invading the Kursk oblast and taking 74 Russian settlements there including Oleshnye and Sudzha. So “Western supplied armor” is invading Russian territory over the last week.
on 02024-08-13#video from two days ago about #Ukraine invading Russia #politics
on 02024-08-13#video compilation from the #Ukraine war from #Armapedia, in Spanish, mostly around Chasiv Yar from late last year. A group of journalists being ferried around the front. #politics
on 02024-08-13#video #toread about radio-controlled machine-gun #weaponry in #Ukraine. Specifically, a remote-controlled machine-gun nest in a fortification in a bridge embankment — a machine-gun nest with no gunner, which withstood Russian attacks for 40 days, during which it was able to halt Russian advances anywhere within its line of sight. Battery-powered I guess. This was in Avdiivka. #politics
on 02024-08-03#video about a FAB-3000 bombing in Kharkiv, #Ukraine. Seems like the FAB-3000’s error is on the order of ten meters. It’s 3 tonnes (payload 1.4 tonnes TNT) and they tout a 25 “mile” range. Says the Su-34 can accommodate one FAB-3000 or three FAB-1500s. Cites the pro-Russian Telegram channel Fighterbomber. The UMPK (Universal Modular Planning Kit) is a bolt-on guided glider which supposedly gives it a 50 “mile” range as a so-called “glide bomb”. #weaponry #politics
on 02024-07-07#video on Voronezh ammunition #weaponry depot blowing up near #Ukraine #politics
on 02024-07-07#video on US #weaponry failing to hit in #Ukraine (JDAMs and SDBs) #toread #politics
on 02024-07-07#video from Terra from today of #Ukraine fighting. #toread #politics
on 02024-07-07#DarkFootage #video of US #weaponry in #Ukraine, specifically a NaviStar M1224 MaxxPro. The video sounds like a NaviStar Defense ad. Mostly it consists of a single 5-second piece of drone footage repeated over and over again. #politics
on 02024-07-07#video of #Ukraine fighting from six days ago; supposedly the Russians lost 1110 troops, 115 vehicles, and 66 artillery pieces that day. Currently 500k Russians are there, almost as many as have died there so far, and another 200k to 300k are about to be sent. #politics
on 02024-07-07#video of a T90M being defeated by a pair of Bradley IFVs before getting blown up by a drone, along with some reflections on the nature of battlefield power. Not a very credible source. #weaponry #Ukraine #politics
on 02024-07-07#video of voiceovers over repeating stock footage from anti-Russia propaganda channel "Military Show" about #Ukraine, not worth finishing watching #politics
on 02024-07-07#video from #Ukraine from three days ago, killing Russian troops with #flying #weaponry. Another “Terra” fundraiser video. This time they’re flying the drones from inside some kind of wooden structure rather than a basement, where they have a butane canister camping stove set up. I think they’re in a trench. Drones with arms made of carbon-fiber tubes again. They’re attacking a similar command-and-control center on the Russian side, in a house with its windows barricaded with sandbags. The first drone, a quadcopter, blows most of the roof off; the second one, a hexcopter, carries a heavier charge, a thermobaric warhead which looks like it weighs close to 5 kg and has tailfins for dropping from a plane. It sets fire to the building. The next drone seems to be carrying an RPG without a fragmentation belt, which they use to attack an IFV (so maybe the armor-piercing HEAT is indeed in play here). They claim the explosion killed all the passengers. The next drone, attacking a squad of three infantrymen on foot, failed to explode on impact, but did explode shortly afterwards, probably killing all three of them with shrapnel. The next drone attacks a lone infantryman, who futilely tries to shoot it down with a rifle. Then they kill another infantryman who was walking slowly because he was wounded. Then they launch another large hexcopter carrying a 3-kg charge to attack a trench; the infantry hear it and flee into the dugout, to no avail. Then there’s another hexcopter with the repurposed thermobaric bomb, which explodes in a trench. They’re apparently driving around Ukraine on the highways in an unarmored van with the door open. #politics
on 02024-07-02pro-Russian source #Military-Summary describing the current #Ukraine warfront with a map of incidents; e.g., the Ukrainians lost a whole convoy in the forest near Synkivka according to night-vision video, the Russians captured an Abrams tank in Berdychi, etc. #video
on 02024-06-26#video footage from the fascist Azov Brigade of trench warfare in the defoliated pine forest Serebryansky Pine Forest in #Ukraine. Evacuation of wounded soldier (left leg and pneumothorax) on a stretcher to an IFV. A puzzling thing is that there don’t seem to be any anti-personnel mines, though plenty of anti-tank mines.
on 02024-06-26#video footage of a captured turtle tank in #Ukraine which had no ammunition and no explosives in its reactive armor. Then footage from a trench battle.
on 02024-06-26#video on FAB-3000 M-54 glide bomb with UMPC (unified planning and correction(?)) guidance system, which struck 10 meters from its target in #Ukraine today. #weaponry
on 02024-06-26decoy #weaponry being built in #Ukraine #video with lots of talking heads and stock footage from #DeutscheWelte
on 02024-06-26#video on #Ukraine’s naval drone #weaponry, including the Marichka, a torpedo with a range of 1000 km and the ability to go dormant. Gets to the Sergey Kotov at about 15'30" and then the Tsezar Kunikov and the corvette Ivanovets, which apparently they also sank. The time-wasting talking head describes it as a “garage industry” — it’s decentralized to prevent Russian targeting of the production facilities. And apparently there’s an “Unmanned Systems Force” as a new branch of the Ukrainian armed forces.
on 02024-06-26as of a month ago, in #Ukraine, Russia had had 1800 tanks destroyed, 530 captured, and 270 abandoned. They’re starting to deploy T-55s and T-54s and US$4.5M T-90Ms (about the same cost as an M1 Abrams tank), but not T-14s. Another annoying #weaponry #video made of talking heads and stock footage. Russia’s new budget spends 6% of GDP on the military
on 02024-06-26The Sun (garbage #UK tabloid) claims NATO tank #weaponry is too heavy for #Ukraine’s bridges or indeed those in most of Eastern Europe, which have a 60-tonne limit, and with active protection systems too heavy for even the ground. Lots of talking head footage and even repeating stock footage, so kind of a trash #video
on 02024-06-26#video about FPV drone #weaponry in #Ukraine, describing the tradeoffs of things like analog vs. digital video. Lots more #3D-printing on view here.
on 02024-06-25in April 02022 #DJI quit Russia and #Ukraine over the widespread use of the Mavic as improvised #flying #weaponry. Supposedly also Starlink was crucial to streaming FPV footage from drone crews to artillery crews until March 02023, at which point they blocked their service in Russian-occupied territory, over water, and at speeds over 100km/hour, claiming that the purpose of providing Starlink was humanitarian, not military. #video
on 02024-06-25#video of #Ukraine bomb-dropping #flying #weaponry killing Russian soldiers. Fundraising video for “Terra”. In Ukrainian with English subtitles.
on 02024-06-25#video from two weeks ago of #Ukraine kamikaze FPV #flying #weaponry killing Russian soldiers. Fundraising video for “Terra”. The first drone they fly is a hexcopter, maybe a surveillance drone; the first kamikaze they show taking off with a metal cylinder zip-tied to its bottom is a quadcopter whose arms seem to be round tubes, maybe GFRP. It's using three-bladed propellers and has a fairly oversized battery pack on top. The Russian targets, which they refer to as “cockroaches” (like in Rwanda!), are holding a previously Ukrainian trench; the first drone blows up in the trench, though the actual death is censored on YouTube. The squad is operating the drones from a concrete-roofed brick basement close to the front lines. The second and third drones are used to disable what looks like a turtle-tank-armored IFV, and the fourth kills a Russian soldier in the trench who is attempting to shoot it down with what looks like a shotgun. The fifth kamikaze drone launches carrying what looks like an RPG, which is zip-tied to it and thus unable to fly on its own; not sure if it has a shrapnel belt. It’s pointed horizontally, so it wouldn’t be useful for HEAT; instead they detonate it over the head of a fleeing Russian infantryman, killing him. A sixth kills another fleeing infantryman with a fragmentation charge, and a seventh is launched carrying another RPG to pursue the last infantryman, but opportunistically attacks a “Bukhanka” vehicle poorly hidden inside a hangar instead. An eighth is used to set fire to the building some other troops fled into. Because some other troops fled into a hangar, they launch a heavier hexcopter kamikaze drone with a larger charge (4 kg of PVV-7, later described as 3 kg), whose arms are carbon-fiber-reinforced tubes.
on 02024-06-25#video #toread on #Ukraine #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video of an Irish FPV pilot from South Side Dublin, nicknamed “Irishman”, with Ukrainian parents, in the “Terra” FPV unit of the third “storm brigade”, #flying drones into Russian D-30 (122mm howitzer, perhaps US$3 million) and D-20 #weaponry in #Ukraine from what seems to be a stone vaulted basement; they said they knew the first one wasn’t a decoy from observing artillery fire the day before, though later they identified a decoy from the FPV video. They destroy a whole artillery unit (six artillery pieces, or maybe four, or two, it varies). He came in through the Internatsionali Ligion (my transcription). Mostly interviews with the four soldiers in the unit. A Russian FPV drone finds the bunker where they’re piloting from but doesn’t find them. They’re uploading the videos to raise money for more drones on social media.
on 02024-06-25#video of Russian soldiers on a speedboat on the Dnieper shooting down a #Ukraine FPV drone #flying after them, maybe with a rifle. A second drone covers the boat with shrapnel from an air blast, killing four of the seven soldiers; the other two, unable to control the boat, jump into the water as a third drone arrives, killing them as well. A seventh remains unaccounted for. A fourth FPV drone blows up the boat. #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video from #Ukraine of an FPV pilot repeatedly buzzing a squad of soldiers #flying #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video on Chinese type 69 RPG #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-25#video of ground-based #Slaughterbots in #Ukraine (D-21-11) looks like a slow-moving four-wheeler ATV. The presenter calls it “their drone” and a “UGV”. Ukrainian design. Allen bolts, lots of laser-cut (?) steel plate. The machine gun is mounted on shock absorbers (something like McPherson struts, with springs around what looks like a ground steel piston, but I think it’s actually just sliding through greased bushings). The cut metal plates, which have weight-reduction cutouts, are bent and intermittently welded onto structural steel tubing to form the frame. No visible ribs, so they probably aren’t pressed, just cut and bent in a brake. Lots and lots and lots of screws, probably optimized for field hackability and repairs. There’s a ripcord, but not for pull-starting the engine. About the size of a riding lawnmower or golf cart, and about as fast in what they show here. It can carry about 4–6 people when the machine gun isn’t mounted, or one person in a lying-down position, tied down with bungee cords to built-in D-ring tiedown spots. It’s electric with 15km of battery; the battery does have ribs. Two or three cameras on both the front and the back surrounded by near-infrared LEDs. Two 1.5-meter-long things at the back that seem to be large whip antennas. Turns in place like a tank rather than by turning the wheels; there seems to be a chain drive to each wheel, protected by a metal chain guard. It seems you can drive it from a laptop with a game controller or from a purpose-built FPV remote controller.
on 02024-06-25#video of #Ukraine Azov Brigade footage about how they captured a Russian trench fortification in the middle of a forest near the Donetsk/Luhansk border
on 02024-06-25#BrandonMitchell #video footage from Donbas of #Ukraine FPV drone pilots #flying a small ducted-fan quadcopter in the house, then showing off a larger non-kamikaze quadcopter US$700 “Lucky Strikes” drone which apparently drops NATO and Polish grenades. Then they show multiple workshops and weapons including with improvised contact fuzes and tailfins (made by #3D-printing in some cases) installed on these grenades. The famous fragmentation sleeves on RPGs are also shown. They even seem to have a HEAT anti-tank warhead rigged up with 3-D printed tailfins to drop from quadcopters onto tanks. “FPVs are very effective against [sic] destroying armor. (...) NATO munitions are difficult to convert. So many safety mechanisms.” Footage of drone making. #3D-printing around the clock. Also shows FPV-driven remote-controlled cars for laying mines, with wheels and wheelbase similar to a four-wheeled push lawnmower. The radio signals still seem to be direct rather than relayed. Mentions a friend of his who nearly got killed three times because she didn’t know she needed to “anonymize” her Mavic drone (apparently something you have to do in these workshops). Lots of discussion of logistics, timescales, repair pipelines, parts shortages. He says, “We're losing the war. It's not lost, it’s far from lost, (...)”. Lots of discussion of how to raise funds on social media for the war. #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video from November on diy #drones and #weaponry in #Ukraine, in the drone labs. Largely talking-head footage though. Claims that they gave Ukraine an “edge” that “leveled the playing field”. Mentions friends of soldiers in Ukraine organizing fundraisers on Instagram. Mentions that they’re using “signal booster drones” to counter jamming, and an SBIR for “a lethal payload capability that can be deployed on a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS)”. A pretty reasonable #introduction if you don’t know anything.
on 02024-06-25a #video about anti-drone #weaponry being supplied to #Ukraine, the Australian "Slinger" system by “Electro Optic Systems”, which turns out to be a truck-mounted single-barrel machine gun with automatic targeting via image processing, using “the tracking (...) the stabilization algorithms we’ve used to develop for deep space tracking”. Ten were to be delivered by the end of 02023. #Pricing “less than under one million US dollars”. #Australia #politics
on 02024-06-25another #video #toread on #PPDS #Slaughterbots #weaponry in #Ukraine #flying
on 02024-06-25#video from 9 months ago on flat-pack waxed cardboard drone #weaponry in #Ukraine “destroying Russian jets”; the airfoils and the rest of the bodies are assembled with rubber bands and tape and can be repaired with a hot glue gun, cardboard, and tape. Looks like there are some wooden rails (dowels?) for mounting the airfoils. Mainly powered by a single #brushless motor and propeller. Brands printed on the body are “Tanglewood Group Ltd.”, “SYPAQ Australia” (who exhibited it at a military trade show this year), and “CORVO precision payload delivery system” ("PPDS"). There’s what look like laser-cut balsa or other hardwood spars in the kit, at least in some cases plywood. SYPAQ’s Michael Partridge is quoted as saying a laptop allows you to “mission plan and launch” it, so presumably it’s not FPV, though FPV seems to be the main approach used these days. “About a shoebox size [unassembled], can carry roughly three kilos. (...) we've delivered over 600 of the PPDS into Ukraine.” Has been supplying “100 of these every month since March”. Mentions a strike at an airbase at Kursk destroying “five fighter jets, a missile launcher, and an air defense system,” then another attack on a Russian site a few days later destroying two cargo planes, also probably with these cardboard drones. #Pricing quoted at AU$5000 per drone. #Slaughterbots #flying
on 02024-06-25#video #toread from the Sun about NATO tank #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-23Russian propaganda (?) #video #toread to scare people away from fighting in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-23another Sun #video #toread on turtle tanks in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-23#video #toread on #Ukraine naval #weaponry
on 02024-06-23#video of hilarious #Ukraine #weaponry consisting of six AK-74s hose-clamped together to form a sort of many-triggered Gatling to shoot down drones with
on 02024-06-20#video from #Ukraine of fragmentation sleeves to adapt RPG #weaponry to kill people instead of tanks
on 02024-06-20#video #news of new turtle tank #weaponry designs in #Ukraine from a month ago
on 02024-06-20#video on Russia manufactured 1500 new tanks to send to #Ukraine since 2600+ of its 3000 from February 02022 have already been destroyed, and supposedly is still losing 60 per month. Marina Miron says FPV drones have been the main reason Russia is losing tanks. Also that North #Korea has 3000 tanks. #war
on 02024-06-20#video on #Ukraine troops capturing some Russian troops in Vovchansk. Mostly footage of Twitter screenshots courageously recorded by #The-Enforcer, who then reads them out loud. Seems like pro-Ukraine propaganda. #spam
on 02024-06-15#video apparently #Ukraine drones (?) have attacked some airfields in Russia today, destroying some fighter jets, and the Russian stock exchange and national bank depository insurance agency (nationalclearingcentre.ru? in English?!) have their websites down. Russian government is offering peace terms that don’t require unconditional surrender, nor everything east of the Dnieper, just Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia (is this really new?)
on 02024-06-14#video of #Ukraine and Russia #tanks popping open like a jack-in-the-box when the ammunition inside gets blown up. Annoyingly dramatic music. In Spanish. Partly blames the autoloader, whose purpose was to make the tanks smaller, and therefore both harder to hit and cheaper, but also the fact that the other half of the ammunition is under the crew, a part which is often left empty nowadays. Also points out that usually the jack-in-the-box explosion is 30-60 minutes after the initial hit, giving the crew time to escape before that rather fatal explosion. Contrasts the Abrams’s blow-out panels. Suppoedly shows Lancet HEAT #drones destroying an Abrams at 11'05". #weaponry
on 02024-06-12extensive #video of #Ukraine drone attacks on Russian forces (66 minutes) #toread
on 02024-06-12#video of eight US-made armored vehicles destroyed by propeller-powered US$35000 Russian Lancet kamikaze drones near Bakhmut in #Ukraine. This resulted in the #USA imposing sanctions on the Russian company that made them.
on 02024-06-12#video of the results of Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv, #Ukraine. The Air Force says it shot down all 24 drones and five out of six missiles (one ALBM, four cruise missiles, and an Iskander ballistic missiles). Apparently one got through. Poland scrambled jets in case they were aimed at Poland. Russia claims to have nuclear warheads deployed in Belarus. Russian warship and nuclear submarine are curently in Havana.
on 02024-06-12#video about the French Foreign Legion entering #Ukraine two weeks ago as “instructors”. Also says that as of 02024-05-27 the countries that allowed their weapons to be used (by Ukraine) on Russian soil were Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, and Czechia; the #USA joined the lis a week ago. Lots of time-wasting talking-head and stock footage. Video is 28 minutes long, therefore #toread
on 02024-06-12#video about Russian “turtle tanks” in #Ukraine, tanks with sheet-metal sheds on top, which apparently help a lot against FPV drones but can’t turn their turrets much. Sometimes hanging chains obstruct quadcopter entrance through openings. Relevant that #USA and #EU stopped sending much aid in October.
on 02024-06-12#Ukraine #video about HIMARS attacks on Russian bases on Monday.
on 02024-06-12another #video about improvised drone #weaponry, contrasting #Ukraine’s improvised FPV kamikaze drones with RPGs with Russia’s Iranian-made GPS(?)-targeted Shahed-136 drones (though I’m pretty sure Russia makes plenty of its own FPV kamikaze drones). Unfortunately mostly filler stock footage
on 02024-06-12another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up various Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-12another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up three Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-10#video about #Ukraine withdrawing US-provided Abrams M1A1 #weaponry from the battlefield last year due to their vulnerability to Russian drones. Mostly stock footage, but I think this is a Russian propaganda channel
on 02024-06-10the Russian rouble is slightly up against the US dollar over the last two years despite enormous volatility last year around the invasion of #Ukraine. #forex #politics #Russia
on 02023-02-08surge in demand for iodine tablets in #Finland on Tuesday due to increased risk of #nuclear-war due to #Russia invading #Ukraine
on 02022-10-12Ted Galen Carpenter of Cato blames the invasion of #Ukraine by #Russia on #NATO expansion, pointing out that he warned of this in his book in 01994, and other people warned of it including Madeleine Albright, Strobe Talbott, George Kennan (01998), and Robert M. Gates. #history
on 02022-05-21#Finland’s leaders announce they want to join #NATO due to #Russia invading #Ukraine
on 02022-05-21#Ukraine people don’t like #Chomsky’s #politics
on 02022-05-21#Russia, in the #Ukraine #war, uses soldiers’ cellphones to target them individually — and their families.
on 02018-08-162000 #Ukraine casualties in #Russia’s forces released by “Cargo-200”
on 02016-11-21“Highly destructive malware [known as BlackEnergy] that infected at least three regional power authorities in #Ukraine led to a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity last week” #security
on 02016-01-04