War

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Chill Political Economy, War

My assessment is that Harris will be slightly better than Biden for Ukraine, while Trump will be substantially worse. And one big reason is that the Trump campaign is being indirectly bankrolled and assisted by Russian money and propaganda, and to a lesser extent by the Chinese as well.

Trump is loyal to one thing, and that is cold hard currency. He’ll never quite be Putin’s lapdog, but he’ll be tame enough as long as the money spigot keeps flowing. And that’ll mean bad things for Ukraine.

Paragren

Chill Video, Video (other), War

Not to take away anything from her thinking this up herself, but paratroopers have been doing that for ages with the Mk 19. Indirect fire with that weapon to engage troops which are in defilade is just part of the game. Advance, shoot and scoot with the 19 is a pretty standard thing. But she’s right — it’s incredibly dangerous but also effective.

That tells me the Ukrainians don’t have as many advisors from NATO/US as they should if they have to cook these tactics up themselves.

Deter

Chill Politics, Prediction, War

I very much hope we do not go to war with China, to be clear. It would be disastrous for both countries and for the world. We should do all that is reasonable to prevent this outcome that still protects our own valid interests while not leaving our allies to hang1. But part of that prevention is putting in place a strong deterrent, i.e., a military with enough resources to plausibly fight and win a protracted war if needed. In the realpolitik of nations — which resemble corporations in their amorality — that ability to be a lethal snake in the grass is the only deterrent that matters. Therefore, at least in this case, being prepared for that war is an excellent way to prevent it ever occurring.

Harris seems to understand this, at least. It remains to be seen if she acts on her understanding if she wins and the inevitable coup is not successful. If there is a coup in 2024 or 2025 that ousts her and installs Trump, I’d expect the war with China to occur during the middle of his term as he’ll be even more weak and incompetent than his first already-dismal effort. And the nation will be in chaos. This will be all China needs to do what they are already planning to do. They absolutely will not ignore that opportunity. And no, we will not be able to avoid that war even with Trump at the helm, but what we will be is utterly unprepared to fight it.

One of the main reasons I support Harris is that attempting to forestall the war with China is something she’ll be better at in every way possible. And right now preventing that war while readying ourselves to fight it is the most important issue we face. It’s far more important than climate change, disease prevention, crime or anything else that most people seem obsessed with. But it’s been a long time since a war had any real effect on the US so people have forgotten.

There is no perfect candidate. There is no truly just war. But we are coming up on some pretty hard years ahead. We need to prepare for them, whatever they might bring. Trump will be completely incompetent at the project of averting war or prosecuting it in the highly-likely event Ares does point his blood-stained finger at us once again. This storm is coming whether we like it or not. The only thing to do now is get ready as best we can.

  1. As they would, mostly, without us when China gets squirrelly.

Pressing It

Chill War

Satellite images show Ukraine’s expanding attacks inside Russia.

This is very good. This is all about supply disruption. The Russians can’t even use their pitiful fighting style if they have nothing to do it with — if the Ukrainians do enough of this, Russian forces will have no way to get to the battlefield and nothing to fight with once they get there.

My guess is there’s a probably a combination of factors allowing these sort of attacks to succeed now: A de facto backing off by the United States (which the article mentions) on not allowing long-range weapons to be used inside Russia and the arrival of better, less-jammable long-range drones en masse.

Either way, this is great. Not only do I want Ukraine to win and survive, I want to prevent 100,000 American KIAs in Poland in ~2030 when we’re already fighting China, or about to (at that time).

Drone Adv

Chill War

Russia has an artillery advantage, true1. However, Ukraine has a 10 to 1 UAV advantage in actually-deployed drones. And that’s pretty huge.

  1. Though not as much as most people claim.

Droner Kebab

Chill War

The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan.

Good. Yesterday, I was just thinking about a future post covering essentially this sort of drone screen for Taiwan. One thing about the US military is that often its best, most advanced capabilities are classified so the appearance of being far behind the competition is misleading. Having no need of stotting as other countries do, the US can bide its time and surprise adversaries with unexpected tech and hardware.

This implies that we’re doing better with drones than anyone had previously suspected.

Heimdall

Chill War

Pretty sure I’ve been watching modern combat footage too much. Thinking about drones hovering, ever-watchful, waiting to attack. People dying doesn’t bother me but the idea of something that’s relentless and inhuman stalking me from above is a pretty terrible idea.

Will lay off that footage for a bit — at least the drone attacks. We’ve somehow found a way to make war even worse. Now that is innovation.