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This is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (an

This is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (and better than adversaries can, too). Just to pick a recent example: Russian air defense in the early stages of the Ukraine war was dismal (more specifically: defense against big, slow drones like Bayraktar), despite having sufficient AA capability "on paper"-- the war allowed them to visibly improve. I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

neutronicus 7mo ago
"Data moats" are a problem for military tech, too, I guess.
- btown 7mo ago
  One very interesting instance of the "military data moat" is Ukraine's annotated database of drone footage, perhaps the first of its scale from live engagements [0]: > They can now draw on an enormous pool of real warfare information. Last year alone, Ukrainian drones recorded around 820,000 verified strikes against Russian targets... Meanwhile, the country’s Avengers AI platform detects upwards of 12,000 enemy targets every week. Developers can now access these sources and the data that they gather to train their systems on the movements of a real Russian turtle tank or a camouflaged Lancet launcher. > “Ukraine currently possesses a unique body of battlefield data unmatched anywhere in the world,” recently appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. “This includes millions of annotated frames collected during tens of thousands of combat drone missions.” With the latency and offline constraints of battlefield technology, smaller models, trained with better data, may prove to have a significant edge. But it's still early days on how data like this might prove advantageous in other environments. [0] https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-battlefield-data-into-a-world-first-ai-training-hub/ https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-b... (unconfirmed source, this is not an endorsement)
dlisboa 7mo ago
There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example. Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure. Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.
- icegreentea2 7mo ago
  Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective. Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on. If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.
  - energy123 7mo ago
    In the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense is used to deny air superiority to the enemy. Just a few days ago, Ukraine blew up Russia's helicopters in the air with drones. It's not the successful hits that matter, it's the capabilities that you deny by posing that credible threat.
  - bojan 7mo ago
    The difference being, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
energy123 7mo ago
Practise is good, but exhaustion is bad. Russia is getting exhausted, which is why their influence collapsed in Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia, allowing the US to overtake those vacuums. The US in WW2 staged their 20th century by letting others (China, South East Asia and the British/Soviets) get exhausted first. This was more an accident of geography rather than US grand strategy, but it worked all the same.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  Except this looks likely to exhaust the US/Israel alliance, if it continues long, leaving China in the "US in/after WWII" spot in the analogy.
  - elfly 7mo ago
    USA won't injure or kill 1 in 25 of young adults in the Iran war, unless somehow Iran does have a nuke and wants to use it, come on.
    - ceejayoz 7mo ago
      Raw manpower is hardly the only aspect of war. Especially in modern war. Running out of fancy equipment, for example, causes quite a few problems if your opponent hasn't. Like interceptor missiles.
      - jopsen 7mo ago
        Currently conflict is a really good sales pitch for buying more interceptors. You could expect order books to get so thick that production increases. I mean looking from the side lines, I could see why many countries might want to have a few interceptors on hand. Just in case, it's certainly a nice way to buy some time.
    - pjc50 7mo ago
      Quite possibly would end up killing or injuring that many Iranians, though. Gaza is up to 10% of the population killed or injured in the Oct 7 reprisals: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/HumanTollGaza https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/HumanTollGaza
roysting 7mo ago
There is no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time. That was a long time ago though. MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”. There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”. Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you. It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.
- srean 7mo ago
  I agree that a barrage of maneuvering missiles can be neigh impossible to defend against. Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ? It's going to devastating to soft tissue surely, and pierce through ordinary sheet metal, but normal concrete walls might offer sufficient protection. Unless, of course, it punches through the ceiling by virtue of sheer kinetic energy. BTW I have no expertise in these matters, so corrections would be very welcome. I also recognize that I am commenting about something from the comfort and of being out of range and this discussion can be very distressing.
  - reillyse 7mo ago
    Instead of a cluster of grenades think many drones, the numbers start looking pretty bad when you have 100s of drones rather than a couple of missiles.
  - m000 7mo ago
maxglute 7mo ago
>much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict. The value of carrying a big stick is lost when others see the stick breaks after a few swings. There's value in maintaining military kayfabe - revealing hand in sideshows and losing deterrence for main events as result can be much costlier down the line. What was learned that wasn't already known and deliberately avoided in polite conversation?
jsw97 7mo ago
Definitely, you have to weigh the benefit of experience against the cost of revelation. (And all the other costs of course.)
don_esteban 7mo ago
The defense against Bayraktar at the beginning (the big column to the north of Kiev) was dismal because AA assets were turned off, not because they were unable to shoot Bayraktars. The problem was command and coordination. Darwin worked and Russians learned (as did Ukrainians). Regarding your last point: In peace time, you want to prioritize hiding your true capabilities (perhaps inflating them in (misleading direction) to deter them from attacking). Once the ware breaks out, you want to improve your capabilities as fast as possible.
- fpoling 7mo ago
  With Bayraktar it was a software update for radar that allowed for Russian to destroy them. The radar signature of Bayraktar was way off from a typical target that radars were looking for at the beginning of the war.
- myrmidon 7mo ago
  I'd argue that few things are more dangerous for a country than drastically overestimating your own military assets while trying to do big stick diplomacy-- that's how you end up completely lost (WW2 France), or throwing away hundred thousands of lifes for little gain (Russia now). Sure, opponents thinking your "stick" is bigger in peacetime is nice, might save you some money and improve diplomatic outcomes, but those gains are marginal compared to overestimating yourself and then finding out the hard way...
thaumasiotes 7mo ago
> I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict. That depends on how far out of touch your reputation was with the facts. If you're not able to live up to your preexisting reputation, being tested is all downside even if it improves your actual capabilities.

neutronicus 7mo ago

"Data moats" are a problem for military tech, too, I guess.

btown 7mo ago
One very interesting instance of the "military data moat" is Ukraine's annotated database of drone footage, perhaps the first of its scale from live engagements [0]: > They can now draw on an enormous pool of real warfare information. Last year alone, Ukrainian drones recorded around 820,000 verified strikes against Russian targets... Meanwhile, the country’s Avengers AI platform detects upwards of 12,000 enemy targets every week. Developers can now access these sources and the data that they gather to train their systems on the movements of a real Russian turtle tank or a camouflaged Lancet launcher. > “Ukraine currently possesses a unique body of battlefield data unmatched anywhere in the world,” recently appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. “This includes millions of annotated frames collected during tens of thousands of combat drone missions.” With the latency and offline constraints of battlefield technology, smaller models, trained with better data, may prove to have a significant edge. But it's still early days on how data like this might prove advantageous in other environments. [0] https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-battlefield-data-into-a-world-first-ai-training-hub/ https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-b... (unconfirmed source, this is not an endorsement)

dlisboa 7mo ago

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example. Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure. Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.

icegreentea2 7mo ago
Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective. Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on. If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.
- energy123 7mo ago
  In the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense is used to deny air superiority to the enemy. Just a few days ago, Ukraine blew up Russia's helicopters in the air with drones. It's not the successful hits that matter, it's the capabilities that you deny by posing that credible threat.
- bojan 7mo ago
  The difference being, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

energy123 7mo ago

Practise is good, but exhaustion is bad. Russia is getting exhausted, which is why their influence collapsed in Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia, allowing the US to overtake those vacuums. The US in WW2 staged their 20th century by letting others (China, South East Asia and the British/Soviets) get exhausted first. This was more an accident of geography rather than US grand strategy, but it worked all the same.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
Except this looks likely to exhaust the US/Israel alliance, if it continues long, leaving China in the "US in/after WWII" spot in the analogy.
- elfly 7mo ago
  USA won't injure or kill 1 in 25 of young adults in the Iran war, unless somehow Iran does have a nuke and wants to use it, come on.
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    Raw manpower is hardly the only aspect of war. Especially in modern war. Running out of fancy equipment, for example, causes quite a few problems if your opponent hasn't. Like interceptor missiles.
    - jopsen 7mo ago
      Currently conflict is a really good sales pitch for buying more interceptors. You could expect order books to get so thick that production increases. I mean looking from the side lines, I could see why many countries might want to have a few interceptors on hand. Just in case, it's certainly a nice way to buy some time.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    Quite possibly would end up killing or injuring that many Iranians, though. Gaza is up to 10% of the population killed or injured in the Oct 7 reprisals: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/HumanTollGaza https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/HumanTollGaza

roysting 7mo ago

There is no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time. That was a long time ago though. MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”. There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”. Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you. It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.

srean 7mo ago
I agree that a barrage of maneuvering missiles can be neigh impossible to defend against. Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ? It's going to devastating to soft tissue surely, and pierce through ordinary sheet metal, but normal concrete walls might offer sufficient protection. Unless, of course, it punches through the ceiling by virtue of sheer kinetic energy. BTW I have no expertise in these matters, so corrections would be very welcome. I also recognize that I am commenting about something from the comfort and of being out of range and this discussion can be very distressing.
- reillyse 7mo ago
  Instead of a cluster of grenades think many drones, the numbers start looking pretty bad when you have 100s of drones rather than a couple of missiles.
- m000 7mo ago

maxglute 7mo ago

>much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict. The value of carrying a big stick is lost when others see the stick breaks after a few swings. There's value in maintaining military kayfabe - revealing hand in sideshows and losing deterrence for main events as result can be much costlier down the line. What was learned that wasn't already known and deliberately avoided in polite conversation?

jsw97 7mo ago

Definitely, you have to weigh the benefit of experience against the cost of revelation. (And all the other costs of course.)

don_esteban 7mo ago

The defense against Bayraktar at the beginning (the big column to the north of Kiev) was dismal because AA assets were turned off, not because they were unable to shoot Bayraktars. The problem was command and coordination. Darwin worked and Russians learned (as did Ukrainians). Regarding your last point: In peace time, you want to prioritize hiding your true capabilities (perhaps inflating them in (misleading direction) to deter them from attacking). Once the ware breaks out, you want to improve your capabilities as fast as possible.

fpoling 7mo ago
With Bayraktar it was a software update for radar that allowed for Russian to destroy them. The radar signature of Bayraktar was way off from a typical target that radars were looking for at the beginning of the war.
myrmidon 7mo ago
I'd argue that few things are more dangerous for a country than drastically overestimating your own military assets while trying to do big stick diplomacy-- that's how you end up completely lost (WW2 France), or throwing away hundred thousands of lifes for little gain (Russia now). Sure, opponents thinking your "stick" is bigger in peacetime is nice, might save you some money and improve diplomatic outcomes, but those gains are marginal compared to overestimating yourself and then finding out the hard way...

thaumasiotes 7mo ago

> I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict. That depends on how far out of touch your reputation was with the facts. If you're not able to live up to your preexisting reputation, being tested is all downside even if it improves your actual capabilities.