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And the greatest and second largest army of the world, didn't even notice a few foreign drones traveling 1700 miles across their land! I wonder who's gonna fall out of a window for this.
Ukraine has been systematically destroying all air defense and radars. What remains is now around Moscow and Putin's home. Even if detected, stopping the drones without defense is hard.
Put in Put out
Im a little out of the loop, why are they suddenly able to do this now? What changed in their capabilities?
From what I read a few days ago one of the conditions for US aid under biden was that Ukraine make no strikes on russian soil. When trump pulled all the aid to Ukraine it was a huge blow, but also took the leash off.
After that all they had in their way was developing the actual drones and techniques to make the strikes, as well as planning them.
As far as I know, the condition was that US (nor NATO) weapons can't be used on attacks to Russian soil. That's one part why Ukraine has basically done a world record speedrun on native drone production. No one has (nor can) deny them from using their own weapons how they see fit.
Removing stupid limitations on how they can hit back has helped, but that was mostly for short(ish) range missiles.
Ukraine has developed very impressive drone technology in a very short time. It is expected that multiple nations will actually try to make deals to acquire Ukrainian drones at the current NATO summit because they are so good now. So Ukraine is no longer dependent on others to sell them drones. They‘re selling them now.
For example, these drones can use terrain as guidance, so GPS isn’t required for navigation. This also allows them to fly at a very low altitude, avoiding Russian air defense. They’re also very resistant to jamming and have advanced autonomous capabilities, so they can “finish the job” on their own if the link to their operator is severed. Also, they’re very cheap, so it’s possible to overwhelm Russian defenses by swarming them.
In summary, they‘ve developed incredible killing machines that are able to act autonomously, which is very good for them right now but probably not very good for humanity in the long run.
In summary, they‘ve developed incredible killing machines that are able to act autonomously, which is very good for them right now but probably not very good for humanity in the long run.
It's possible that this becomes the new "mutually assured destruction" we had back in the 20th. Basically, a cold war brought on by drones instead of nukes. It could mean a near-future of peace, however uneasy. I can't say that living with the looming propagandized threat of the USSR was good, but I think it was a far sight better than being in an active shooting war with them.
Smart countries are scrambling to buy Ukraine cheap effective next-generation drone warfare weapons. This is developing into a very lucrative market for them.
probably not very good for humanity in the long run.
Eh. C'est la vie. We had a good run.
There was a Black Mirror episode featuring the Boston Dynamics "Dog" robot thing with a machine gun on it, and hunting people down, they are terrifying. It's like being hunted by a zombie tbag doesn't eat or sleep or get tired and won't stop.
Flying drones are a whole new level of scary beyond that.
They've been specifically targeting Russian Air defenses for awhile now forcing them to spread what little they do have even more. Since NATO have been pussies about providing them long range precision munitions they've had to spend time to develop their own cruise missiles like the Neptune and Flamingo the latter of which has entered regular production and has a range of 3000km.
Ukraine is now the premier world class developer of advanced drone warfare equipment and counter electronic jamming systems.
They basically reinvented the Nazi V1 with their Flamingo, and although only small % get through, it's devastatingly accurate against refineries.
Meanwhile, Russia uses the old Nazi strategy of launching very expensive rockets at apartments with civilians in cities, doing 0 strategic damage to Ukraine war capabilities, just like the Nazi V1 and later V2 was used and was relatively useless despite its high price.
Oh, and Ukraine can shoot at almost all Russia's refineries and weapons factories, but Russia can't do it back because Ukrainian can always import from refineries and factories in France, Germany, etc, beyond the NATO border...
We need some research into how effective drone strikes against refineries are to stop climate change. Are they a net gain in carbon emissions, considering the cost of manufacture and the prevented emissions?
You need to cut demand. If the price goes up, refineries are just build elsewhere.
There can be demand destruction from high prices
This. See how the hormuz crisis has caused many to pivot to renewables.
Perhaps, but you can’t tell me Russia can build them faster than Ukraine can destroy them. And in the meantime it means millions of fewer barrels worth of greenhouse gas emissions.
Raise the price enough, and the sold amount will drop. Also, people/industry will begin to look for alternatives.
In many cases it's cheaper to replace it with green alternatives. The refineries have competition from windmills, solar plants, etc. It's not a given that new refineries will fill the gap in the market that destroyed refineries leave.
I do expect the destruction of refineries to be more positive for the climate than if they had continued producing. Especially if you factor in the demand for reliable supply and strategic availability of energy.
Gotta make it worse.
There's the emissions from while it's on fire plus some of the chemicals in it are worse after being burned like that then in regular emissions. Or become other environmental issues on their own once released/burned.
Then the emissions from building a new one.
It's so much better to just shut it down because no one needs it than blow them up
Then the emissions from building a new one.
In Russia's case, depending on how things go, that many not apply all that much.
If things go far enough it might lead to Ukraine striking construction sites of oil refineries. Still not great, but much less worse than an actual running refinery.
TIL Siberia is way bigger than I expected. I knew it was big, but it looks like it’s more than half of Russian landmass. It can’t all be the climate I’m picturing, right? Like it borders Kazakhstan, so I figure at least part of it has to have hot summers
Siberia is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to Siberia.
Still fits at least twice into Texas! /s
Siberia is actually 3/4ths of Russia's landmass. The northern parts are taiga, which are giant uninterrupted forests. The shores of the Arctic Ocean are mostly tundra. In the southern parts the taiga gives way to steppes.
In the northern parts the climate has warm but quite short summers and long cold winters. In the southern part, where most of the population lives, they have the same climate as southern Canada/New England just less humid. The Western parts are also covered by warm winds that originate from the Middle East and hence have higher temperatures than their more Eastern areas. For reference in Novosibirsk, which is the largest city the average yearly summer temperatures reach 25 degrees Celsius but temperatures can also spike to as high as 38 degrees.
So yeah Siberia is not all some barren tundra as most people imagine.
"Do you know how many time zones they have?" "Uh, yessir. Uh, four ... uh, no sir. I never really studied that up." "Eleven." "Eleven. It's not even funny." "Eleven." "Eleven. That's, that's ridiculous." "Eleven."
Oh, It turns out that what some friends in Russia reported was true. They said they had to queue for about two hours just to buy fuel.
I wonder if Ukraine got the idea from Iran?
I don’t mean that as an accusation, but… well, Iran basically has the world economy’s throat. And I know Ukraine’s drones just got the capability, but Iran had to be a fantastic reminder of how fragile an oil economy is.
They've been occasionally attacking oil infrastructure since the beginning of the war. Used to be their "allies" asked them to please tone that down a bit. I guess Ukrainians finally stopped giving a shit.
They saw how quickly nations fell to their knees when you disrupted the flow of oil.
Ukraine started their "long range sanctions" program years before Trump attacked Iran. It's getting more attention now because the years of consistent damage are starting to add up, but it's certainly not new. People who pay attention have always known the economic vulnerability of the oil market.
