9 ms·

Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.

immibis 2y ago
It is, or it's an advantage.
littlestymaar 2y ago
Collateral damage is much less relevant in symmetric conflicts. Nobody is using either a Switchblade or an FPV in the middle of civilian areas in Ukraine right now.
- sgc 2y ago
  Russia is using FPVs to kill civilians on their bicycles or buying fruit, and posting the videos on telegram to laugh about it. This happens every day, it is not a few isolated incidents. It is not boredom, but a chosen tactic.
  - kspacewalk2 2y ago
    Here's a great piece[0] about these Russian "human safari" tactics in Kherson, written by what seems to be the only Western journalist living in that city. [0] https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-hunted-down-by-russian-drones/ https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-h...
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    I hadn't heard of that before, but it really isn't a counter argument to what I'm saying: when you're targeting civilians themselves, you don't have “collateral damage”.
  - usrusr 2y ago
    "Look at how much pain we can inflict, you want to be friends with us, that's the only logical conclusion". That seems to be the explicit strategy here, and I've come to believe that they genuinely think that this is how it should be, that there can't be a different world. Perhaps some linguistic quirk that makes the difference between friendship (that's not based on a power gradient) and allegiance (unite with the strongest, even when they're monsters, in particular when they're monsters) different to express and think about, perhaps it's a long term effect of socialist ideology having co-opted all concepts of friendship based on equality for a system that never was. But the pattern seems to go all the way through society, from the infamous prison hierarchies to imbalanced spousal relationships to the KGB state to the relationship between state power and its barons (who are commonly called oligarchs, but they are the exact opposite, powerless pawns on the political floor that are allowed to hold a fief until they aren't)
phs318u 2y ago
It’s not that collateral damage is irrelevant. It’s that the calculation as to whether collateral damage is “worth it” in the context of the specific goal/target is usually relative and calculated unemotionally. Some may say inhumanly.
- hnbad 2y ago
  Of course it's also worth pointing out that this question hinges on the perceived cost of collateral damage. For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican. Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).
pclmulqdq 2y ago
Russian military doctrine favors collateral damage. I think part of the US's love of precision weapons comes from the fact that they media will go nuts if the US kills non-targets. 20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.
- sgc 2y ago
  > For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday. More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    they use it to hearten the folks back home. Civillian deaths mostly make civillians want to support the war and so is not a good idea. In turn this is why the us doesn't
  - jajko 2y ago
    Last week I've seen russian military coming from 'official' TG channels boasting how they dropped grenades on civilians, Donetsk IIRC. Literally civilians driving in their cars or walking on pedestrian crossing with shopping bags, having grenades dropped on them, killing many including women. Sarajevo tactics all over again, just not serbs anymore (although both societies share a lot in common). Also during beginning of the war there were videos of russian soldiers setting up machine gun posts next to bigger roads and literally gunning every single unsuspecting civilian car that came along... not much better behavior than hamas attack last year. Bucha, civilian mass graves with people having hands tied behind their back with wire and headshot found on territories won back from them. Shows how depraved that society is that this doesn't even cause any upheaval, instead is something to boast about back home and to whole world. Now do a simple projection for next decades. I know China is #1 topic for US right now, but China views US rather as a competitor. Russia views whole west and US specifically as existential threat to actively fight against (and it did in asymetric subversion warfare for past 2 decades). Not whole russian population, they don't give a fuck whether whole world burns as long as they can drink vodka into desperate oblivion, but all their rulers and that's all that matters there. Now how to tackle and survive that due to all the resources required from that land I don't know but future in that regard looks bleak.

It is, or it's an advantage.

Collateral damage is much less relevant in symmetric conflicts. Nobody is using either a Switchblade or an FPV in the middle of civilian areas in Ukraine right now.

sgc 2y ago
Russia is using FPVs to kill civilians on their bicycles or buying fruit, and posting the videos on telegram to laugh about it. This happens every day, it is not a few isolated incidents. It is not boredom, but a chosen tactic.
- kspacewalk2 2y ago
  Here's a great piece[0] about these Russian "human safari" tactics in Kherson, written by what seems to be the only Western journalist living in that city. [0] https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-hunted-down-by-russian-drones/ https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-h...
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  I hadn't heard of that before, but it really isn't a counter argument to what I'm saying: when you're targeting civilians themselves, you don't have “collateral damage”.
- usrusr 2y ago
  "Look at how much pain we can inflict, you want to be friends with us, that's the only logical conclusion". That seems to be the explicit strategy here, and I've come to believe that they genuinely think that this is how it should be, that there can't be a different world. Perhaps some linguistic quirk that makes the difference between friendship (that's not based on a power gradient) and allegiance (unite with the strongest, even when they're monsters, in particular when they're monsters) different to express and think about, perhaps it's a long term effect of socialist ideology having co-opted all concepts of friendship based on equality for a system that never was. But the pattern seems to go all the way through society, from the infamous prison hierarchies to imbalanced spousal relationships to the KGB state to the relationship between state power and its barons (who are commonly called oligarchs, but they are the exact opposite, powerless pawns on the political floor that are allowed to hold a fief until they aren't)

phs318u 2y ago

It’s not that collateral damage is irrelevant. It’s that the calculation as to whether collateral damage is “worth it” in the context of the specific goal/target is usually relative and calculated unemotionally. Some may say inhumanly.

hnbad 2y ago
Of course it's also worth pointing out that this question hinges on the perceived cost of collateral damage. For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican. Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).

pclmulqdq 2y ago

Russian military doctrine favors collateral damage. I think part of the US's love of precision weapons comes from the fact that they media will go nuts if the US kills non-targets. 20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.

sgc 2y ago
> For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday. More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.
- bluGill 2y ago
  they use it to hearten the folks back home. Civillian deaths mostly make civillians want to support the war and so is not a good idea. In turn this is why the us doesn't
- jajko 2y ago
  Last week I've seen russian military coming from 'official' TG channels boasting how they dropped grenades on civilians, Donetsk IIRC. Literally civilians driving in their cars or walking on pedestrian crossing with shopping bags, having grenades dropped on them, killing many including women. Sarajevo tactics all over again, just not serbs anymore (although both societies share a lot in common). Also during beginning of the war there were videos of russian soldiers setting up machine gun posts next to bigger roads and literally gunning every single unsuspecting civilian car that came along... not much better behavior than hamas attack last year. Bucha, civilian mass graves with people having hands tied behind their back with wire and headshot found on territories won back from them. Shows how depraved that society is that this doesn't even cause any upheaval, instead is something to boast about back home and to whole world. Now do a simple projection for next decades. I know China is #1 topic for US right now, but China views US rather as a competitor. Russia views whole west and US specifically as existential threat to actively fight against (and it did in asymetric subversion warfare for past 2 decades). Not whole russian population, they don't give a fuck whether whole world burns as long as they can drink vodka into desperate oblivion, but all their rulers and that's all that matters there. Now how to tackle and survive that due to all the resources required from that land I don't know but future in that regard looks bleak.