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> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely The consensus military opinion I've read on this is that t

> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely The consensus military opinion I've read on this is that tactical nukes aren't very useful militarily; troops in the field are too dispersed. If there's a hardened target, then yes, otherwise not great. They then have to be weighed against the costs of crossing that Rubicon. > why they're suddenly so worried about these spy drones I think this is largely because of opposition screeching.

notahacker 4y ago
I doubt the "spy drones" are of any particular military value anyway. It's more a test to see what will happen if you send something suspicious into your rival's airspace. The Trump administration chose to ignore them, the Biden administration in slightly different geopolitical circumstances chose to shoot them down. Since this would have been an anticipated outcome, I don't think it really changes anything other than making it clear to China that the present US government won't necessarily overlook everything for the sake of good relations.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  The U.S. has been pushing the UK to not include any Chinese equipment in any infrastructure they buy. It’s not clear to me what the Chinese could have learnt thst they didn’t already know.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon (it takes marginally higher resolution images than a satellite but so do lots of less obvious stuff like aircraft and consumer drones that are perfectly entitled to be in US airspace). But the US was pushing the UK not to include Chinese equipment (and indulging in some very loud anti-China rhetoric mostly for domestic consumption) under the previous administration but was too cautious to pull the trigger, so them not being too cautious now is new information. Unmanned balloons are obviously a lower risk way of testing that than other ways it could test the US tolerance, and may play well with Chinese domestic audiences too.
    - LemmyInThePub 4y ago
      > I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon I suggest a balloon payload would be better aimed at monitoring (and establishing patterns of) RF traffic rather than visual data.
rjzzleep 4y ago
What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory? It doesn't even have a working economy anymore, the US tax payer is paying both the government and the military's salaries. It's most resource rich areas are now in Russian hands. They started with over a thousand tanks, hundreds of jets, got hundreds of soviet tanks from various places, got hundreds of artillery pieces and hundreds of thousands of ammunition and somehow we assume that the 120 stitched together leopard1, challenger, and other tanks will now be the wunderwaffe to help them win. All the while all authoritative western military institutions have said that the neither the US nor the EU can compete with Russia when it comes to either artillery nor missile production. People on HN are engineers, how can we not comprehend that you can't just take random objects stitch them together and somehow the whole thing will still work. It's as if I'd have a rails project fire 90% of my engineering team and then hire cobol, C++ and Rust developers and then hope that if each one of them builds their own respective feature in their favourite language I can somehow stitch it together. Such a thing hardly makes sense for a random tank supply chain. Doesn't seem to work for the railway system which uses Soviet gauges and makes even less sense for an integrated air defense system. EDIT: guys, how can you not talk about any of the facts when you guys respond? When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies, when even the US Navy secretary says that Ukraine is depleting NATO weapon stocks, when even the thinktank that predicted the fall of the Russian government are now saying that NATO cannot match Russia in weapon stocks, then you are not winning, just because the borders don't change. The border does not matter. What matters is how much western weapons and Ukrainian personal has been destroyed vs. Russia. Russia has had 1 mobilization and those troops haven't even been committed to battle yet. Ukraine has gone through 12 or so. They lowered the mobilization age to 16. It goes up to 60 and it doesn't even exclude disabilities anymore. That's not winning. That's sacrificing your population. Even the ex Israeli prime minister now said that the US blocked peace deals.
- briffle 4y ago
  Opinions quickly changed when this Russian equipment broke down constantly, or flat out did not work, or had key parts stolen while in storage for all these years. It turns out NATO has been equipping to fight the military Russia said it had.

notahacker 4y ago

I doubt the "spy drones" are of any particular military value anyway. It's more a test to see what will happen if you send something suspicious into your rival's airspace. The Trump administration chose to ignore them, the Biden administration in slightly different geopolitical circumstances chose to shoot them down. Since this would have been an anticipated outcome, I don't think it really changes anything other than making it clear to China that the present US government won't necessarily overlook everything for the sake of good relations.

rhaway84773 4y ago
The U.S. has been pushing the UK to not include any Chinese equipment in any infrastructure they buy. It’s not clear to me what the Chinese could have learnt thst they didn’t already know.
- notahacker 4y ago
  I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon (it takes marginally higher resolution images than a satellite but so do lots of less obvious stuff like aircraft and consumer drones that are perfectly entitled to be in US airspace). But the US was pushing the UK not to include Chinese equipment (and indulging in some very loud anti-China rhetoric mostly for domestic consumption) under the previous administration but was too cautious to pull the trigger, so them not being too cautious now is new information. Unmanned balloons are obviously a lower risk way of testing that than other ways it could test the US tolerance, and may play well with Chinese domestic audiences too.
  - LemmyInThePub 4y ago
    > I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon I suggest a balloon payload would be better aimed at monitoring (and establishing patterns of) RF traffic rather than visual data.

rjzzleep 4y ago

What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory? It doesn't even have a working economy anymore, the US tax payer is paying both the government and the military's salaries. It's most resource rich areas are now in Russian hands. They started with over a thousand tanks, hundreds of jets, got hundreds of soviet tanks from various places, got hundreds of artillery pieces and hundreds of thousands of ammunition and somehow we assume that the 120 stitched together leopard1, challenger, and other tanks will now be the wunderwaffe to help them win. All the while all authoritative western military institutions have said that the neither the US nor the EU can compete with Russia when it comes to either artillery nor missile production. People on HN are engineers, how can we not comprehend that you can't just take random objects stitch them together and somehow the whole thing will still work. It's as if I'd have a rails project fire 90% of my engineering team and then hire cobol, C++ and Rust developers and then hope that if each one of them builds their own respective feature in their favourite language I can somehow stitch it together. Such a thing hardly makes sense for a random tank supply chain. Doesn't seem to work for the railway system which uses Soviet gauges and makes even less sense for an integrated air defense system. EDIT: guys, how can you not talk about any of the facts when you guys respond? When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies, when even the US Navy secretary says that Ukraine is depleting NATO weapon stocks, when even the thinktank that predicted the fall of the Russian government are now saying that NATO cannot match Russia in weapon stocks, then you are not winning, just because the borders don't change. The border does not matter. What matters is how much western weapons and Ukrainian personal has been destroyed vs. Russia. Russia has had 1 mobilization and those troops haven't even been committed to battle yet. Ukraine has gone through 12 or so. They lowered the mobilization age to 16. It goes up to 60 and it doesn't even exclude disabilities anymore. That's not winning. That's sacrificing your population. Even the ex Israeli prime minister now said that the US blocked peace deals.

briffle 4y ago
Opinions quickly changed when this Russian equipment broke down constantly, or flat out did not work, or had key parts stolen while in storage for all these years. It turns out NATO has been equipping to fight the military Russia said it had.