How can I not forget some of these insane details? It is like trying to read a book marinated in hamburger juice, the original record has been hopelessly degraded and enriched.

“Add” is a peculiar word here, you might as well say I “add” to conversations if we are going to start stretching words like taffy.

Well, that’s awkward. Is there a market for “Tactical Vehicle” wrapped Cybertrucks that aren’t bulletproof?

Props for a low budget scifi movie

A tank alone is almost useless, it’s big, loud, has poor visibility and big difficulties to engage close soft targets.

You are right but it is fascinating how this is rapidly changing too…

1. Modern main battle tanks have gotten progressively quieter. Also emissions signatures are being reduced electric drivetrains being a massive leap forward for the stealth potential of armor. They named it a Leopard not a Bear or Rhino for a reason…

2. Modern main battle tanks have superb thermal and night vision optics. The CROWS system on an Abrams is like the turret and sensor suite of an attack helicopter bolted on top, this is in addition to the seperate main gun optics.

3. Systems like the Bullfrog counter uav automated machine gun and PERCH uav launch system that integrate easily onto main battle tanks such as the Abrams tanks position the “western” tank as a co-interlocking platform with unmanned vehicles in a way no other platform can rival.

A tank alone is still useless but it is anything but a legacy platform like the way people say, it is the armored control room that also happens to be located inside the big armored cannon.

$$$$$$$

End of 2026 Russia is going to be crumpled on the ground with Ukraine kicking them in the face to wake up so they can negotiate a ceasefire but Russia is way too fucked up to do anything coherent but lay there in the mud moaning in pain while taking drunken swipes with a knife at Ukraine in attempt to press the attack.

I do not honestly think Russia is capable of continuing to fight that long, especially if we are talking about large mechanized assaults, certainly not at this rate of attrition and also the rate Russia is training Ukrainian personnel to be ruthlessly effective at repelling their mindless assaults as their own soldiers learn nothing and then die.

Not to mention Ukrainian/European military technology is pulling far ahead of Russia while Russia doubles down on trying to make iterative improvements to fundamentally obsolete equipment and doctrine.

It will be a disaster for Russia if they continue to insist on losing for that much longer.

As someone from the US let me speak for most of us when I say Fuck Trump

It is called a gun raid, it is a military tactic that already exists as quite a fleshed out battle concept that relies primarily on a similar shortsightedness to yours in what defenders expect, by the time it is realized a vulnerable asset is near the frontline the artillery system has fulfilled its fire mission and there are now much bigger issues for the defenders to focus on.

Another commonly employed tactical method for offensive operations is the artillery raid. The artillery raid is a rapid air or rapid ground movement of elements into a position to attack a high- payoff target currently beyond the maximum range of available field artillery weapons. This could involve operations across the forward edge of the battle area. Normally, a raid is extremely short and does not involve sustained operations. A detailed plan, surprise, and speedy execution are key factors in a successful raid. Firing units will move forward only the number of vehicles necessary to accomplish the mission. When the fire mission is complete, the howitzer crews prepare the howitzers for movement.

https://companyleader.themilitaryleader.com/2020/03/09/offensive-operations-for-the-field-artillery-battalion-and-below/

https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/News-Article-View/Article/948203/the-gun-raid/

https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/u-s-army-artillery-trains-for-high-end-war-with-helicopter-supplied-gun-raids

Best latte milk

How does the drone get to the battlefield? How do you protect those support crew? You have to consider that along with the rapidity of artillery response.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=7zS3Yl0hu7Y

When you start to consider laser guidance on those shells from spotting unmanned assets the loop from being seen to having incoming fire is almost incomprehensibly short under optimum conditions. Counter battery calculations aren’t even that helpful unless you can act on it in literally seconds or minutes if you are lucky.

The future is drones AND artillery working together, if you think “drone beat artillery” like “paper beat rock” you aren’t understanding this from the right mindset at all.

You have to think of this as you are fighting against a highway-speed-capable armored 155mm howitzer somewhere 20km+ away connected and communicating with drones hunting you.

The measly munitions drone carry pale in comparison to a 155mm shell, so the drone is best used to spot the target…

WHERE

If there is anything I am sure about it is that the children of politicians are largely useless.

Statistically it is a far superior choice to literally pick a random person off the street.

How about the Abrams getting PERCH systems to launch switchblade drones? That one is straight out of C&C Generals.

They are unarguably are, in one recent instance a .50 cal robot obliterated a Russian APC at point blank range, in another one held a position on the frontline for over a month.

Obviously they do not replace humans, but when used in the right ways they are extremely effective.

The primary use of unmanned ground vehicles are for logistics especially logistics with explodey things it is very dangerous to ask a human to carry through a battlefield. If a UGV carrying a bunch of mortar rounds is hit by an FPV drone that sucks for the mortar crew that doesn’t get ammunition but it is unimaginably better than a human being driving a truck full of mortar rounds being hit by one.

The next most useful use of unmanned ground vehicles are for casualty evacuation under fire and under conditions too risky for humans to try.

The third most useful is as a weapon.

So yes this is scary but honestly a human with a gun is still far more terrifying. The broader future of these big derpy rolling ground robots are disaster response and lifesaving applications, they are useful for war too but under very specific human coordinated contexts.

Based on how willing those powers have been to sit by and watch the Palestinian Genocide, I think they have been sufficiently brought to heel or vice versa have brought the US to heel to the point that a shocking silence has already prevailed.

The ducks already had to be brought in line for the Palestinian Genocide, this hardly feels like a speedbump in comparison for a lot of countries in the middle east I suspect.

It also might honestly be that as angry as the rest of the world is, the Ukrainian war has re-emphasized how far ahead US military power and doctrine is especially in dynamic environments and OPEC just doesn’t have the basic military capability to counterbalance. Seeing Russia claim to send SAMs and associated crews to Venezuela as if Russia even has enough air defenses to defend Moscow… It doesn’t help that a lot of the best equipment Saudi Arabia and such have were bought from the US and neither China nor Russia can really claim to be on the level US and European militaries are at in sophistication and actual war experience (though obviously this is variously true and changing at a very rapid rate along many dimensions see India and the EDGE group and such, I doubt this is the likely answer).

Or maybe, and this is MOST likely, OPEC is just used to dealing with washed up dictators that are quickly outliving their usefulness to their supporting power structures around them and knows one way or another Trump has an expiration date so escalating conflict makes less sense than posturing to cut the US out of favorable positions and biding their time until the US has a change in rulers to someone more rationally bribable again. That is what I would do, these strikes and actions against Venezuela are politically unsustainable in the US because they are so blatantly wrong and outside domestic interests.

Important detail here, you are exactly right but this is why Trump is attacking Venezuela to push Venezuela OUT of the oil market and keep oil prices HIGH.

Oil wars are a game of musical chairs right now since this is the beginning of the very long drawn out end of oil.

Why do you think the Australians gave them away ?

Because they are getting newer Abrams tanks…?

…which is why Ukrainian battlefield commanders deployed Abrams tanks straight into the most intense flashpoint of the Ukrainian war at this moment?..?