Russia's foreign ministry condemned the decision of Ecuador to hand over old Russian-made military hardware from its stocks to the U.S. for use in Ukraine, Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti reported on Feb. 2.
The Ecuadorian government announced last month that it would send what it called “Ukrainian and Russian scrap metal” to the U.S. in exchange for modern equipment worth $200 million, according to Reuters.
scratches chin
Hmm. This sounds like what happens is maybe that we may not have funds budgeted to send aid to Ukraine, but do have funds budgeted to send aid to Ecuador.
QUITO, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Ecuador expects to seal a deal for the United States to provide $200 million worth of security equipment and support as it tackles rising violence on the streets and in prisons blamed on drug trafficking gangs, the government said on Wednesday.
As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.
It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.
Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.
All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.
The law caps annual EDA transfers at $500 million. The same law doesn’t dictate the value the president assigns to surplus weapons. In a letter to Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the ships, planes, engines and vehicles as “free concessions.”
The EDA gifts to Greece sweeten a larger arms package that includes 40 Lockheed F-35 stealth fighters, which Greece is buying for $8.6 billion. The Biden administration previously approved, in 2022 and 2023, $60 million in financing for arms-purchases by Athens.
In exchange for this largess, the Americans want the Greeks to donate more weapons to the Ukrainians. “We continue to be interested in the defense capabilities that Greece could transfer or sell to Ukraine,” Blinken wrote.
The Americans even offered a reward once the donation is complete. “If these capabilities are of interest to Ukraine, and pending an assessment of their status and value by the U.S. government, we can explore opportunities for possible additional foreign armed forces financing of up to $200 million for Greece.”
This sounds like a good year to be a country looking to trade in a bunch of weapons for some flashy new ones.
Probably not the most economically-efficient way to get aid to Ukraine, but I suppose politics are a cost of doing business.
Yeah, that’s gonna exacerbate existing demographic issues that are affecting Ukraine (as well as the rest of Europe). It was one of the first issues that I remember raising back when the war kicked off and a bunch of refugees left, that Ukraine’s going to have to deal with stabilizing its post-war population…and that’s something that the EU even as an aggregate hasn’t done a great job with thus far, and for Ukraine, it’s only going to be a tougher job if there’s gonna be freedom of population movement with the EU as a whole, as population tends to flow from poorer areas to wealthier ones.
That’s UN projections for Europe as a whole, not just the EU, but it’s already just past the peak and is entering a period of quite-significant projected population decline.
Dec 15 (Reuters) - The Netherlands has agreed to Bulgaria joining Europe’s passport-free Schengen Zone, the Dutch justice ministry said on Friday, ending its long-held opposition to the move....
Canada's opposition Conservative Party asked the government to send tens of thousands of decommissioned rockets to Ukraine instead of destroying them, CBC reported on Feb. 2. The Canadian Defense Ministry has confirmed that the donation is under consideration.
The Canadian Armed Forces reportedly store 83,303 CRV7 air-to-ground unguided rockets, which were introduced in the 1970s and taken out of service in the early 2000s.
In 2006 Bristol started testing a new version of the CRV7, the CRV7-PG. The weapon was introduced at Eurosatory 2006.[18] Bristol’s current owners, Magellan Aerospace, offered it for sale starting in 2007.
The PG version, for “precision guided”, adds a seeker developed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to the front of any version of an otherwise unmodified CRV7. The seeker uses a simple inertial guidance system through the midcourse, and homes during the terminal approach using a laser designator. Other versions offer anti-radiation seeking, or GPS guidance. The precision guided kit includes the addition of tail fins and an in-flight control system. Combining the laser seeker with the FAT warhead produces a capable long-range anti-tank missile that is faster and much less expensive than traditional platforms like the AGM-114 Hellfire.
If these still work and if the guidance package – which is much newer – is available, it might be possible to convert these to guided air-to-ground missiles.
We did something similar with a guided Hydra conversion; Hydras are cheap and available in great number in the US, and turning them into a precision-guided weapon considerably increases their utility.
The Hydra 70 rocket is a 2.75-inch (70 mm) diameter fin-stabilized unguided rocket used primarily in the air-to-ground role. It can be equipped with a variety of warheads, and in more recent versions, guidance systems for point attacks. The Hydra is widely used by US and allied forces, competing with the Canadian CRV7, with which it is physically interchangeable.
Speaking about Russia’s defense industry, Putin said it “demonstrates a very good both pace and quality of work,” and the superior weapons it produces includes “missile equipment, armored vehicles and everything that is used on the battlefield.”
We are indeed fortunate that Putin’s sense of innate fair play and sportsmanship causes him to refrain from deploying these world-beating T-14s to Ukraine.
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
In a mini-essay titled “Why Ukraine is dangerous for its residents,” Medvedev argued that from now on, any independent state that lies on “historical Russian territories” will serve as a “pretext for renewed hostilities” for as long as it exists.
And it is that logic, fellow citizens of the glorious Motherland, that leads us to the utter necessity for today’s announcement: the concurrent declarations of war upon, with the aim of eliminating their existence, the following so-called “countries”, tumors that contain territory once controlled by the Russian Empire:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Mongolia
Djibouti
Moldova
Romania
Georgia
Belarus
Iran
Finland
Estonia
Lithuania
Latvia
Greece
Turkey
The People’s Republic of China
The United States of America
We anticipate a brief, victorious war of about three days.
Miroslavs Mitrofanovs is the co-chair of the Latvian Russian Union political party along with Tatjana Zdanoka, the lawmaker accused of spying for Russia.
The phrase “witch hunt” was later echoed by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in comments about the allegations against Zdanoka.
I’m not entirely sure that having the spokesman for the entity that you’re supposed to be spying for jump in to defend you is necessarily the most-compelling argument that could be made for innocence.
One of Russia's top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to "denazify" this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage. In fact, Russia's public obsession with "fighting Nazis" masks how its closest relations among European political parties are with those on the
One of Russia’s top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to “denazify” this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage.
When asked how Russia can claim that it is fighting to “de-Nazify” Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Mr Lavrov said: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”
The minister’s statement was met with outrage across Israel’s political spectrum.
I get that The Great Patriotic War is a big thing in Russia and fighting Nazis sells well, but I wonder if Lavrov and company ever look at the narrative they’re working on and think “you know, maybe a different narrative would be easier to support”.
“One of the exciting aspects of console hardware design is that we have freedom with regards to what we put in the console," Cerny begins. "Or to put that differently, we’re not trying to build a low-cost PC, and we aren’t bound by any particular standards. So if we have a brainstorm that audio can become much more immersive and dimensional if there’s a dedicated unit that’s capable of complex math, then we can do that. Or if the future feels like high-speed SSDs rather than HDDs, we can put an end-to-end system in the console – everything from the flash dies to the software interfaces that the game creators use – and get 100% adoption.
looks dubious
The problem with this is that that’s been true for about as long as video game consoles have been around. And…I don’t think that, aside from game controllers – which are now pretty common on the PC – consoles have seen some huge specialization.
I’ve pointed out before that while the strength of PCs is their expandability – you can pay a little more money, get a little smoother or more-detailed graphics or shorter loading times or whatever – the strength of consoles is that they’re locked down. Fewer compatibility issues, it’s harder to cheat, and there’s a level playing field for competitive games. That’s maybe a hardware benefit. But…I don’t think that that’s quite what he’s talking about.
I think that consoles benefit in some ways from having a single company that controls a given console and a single upgrade that happens at the same time. That makes it easier to roll out new hardware without compatibility issues making it too hard to require it. But, again…that just facilitates rolling out new hardware. There’s still a question of what new hardware is actually getting out there.
The problem is that there’s just too much overlap between what makes a good gaming PC and what makes a good video game console.
He points to an amusing video by Linus Tech Tips, which attempted to ‘kill’ the PlayStation 5 by building a $500 gaming PC that outperformed the console.
“They had to get a used motherboard,” he says. "That was the only way that they could build a PlayStation 5 equivalent for a PlayStation 5 price. And if you’re using used parts… well you can get a used PlayStation 5 for eBay for $300-something.
I mean…okay. But…if the basic argument here is that you’re not building low-cost PCs, this doesn’t really support that.
I also think that some of the things that used to play to console strengths are going away. A PC is (generally) designed for single-user use. Yeah, you can rig it up with more, but there’s no standard for multiple people, for example, using keyboards and mice to play one game. The display is (generally) smaller. Whereas consoles were (generally) set up with larger displays and multiple controllers. Games with multiple players were more of a thing at one point.
But today, with VoIP and pretty universal fast Internet access, playing remotely against people with other machines is more-practical on the PC (as well as on the console). That kind of reduces the importance of a case where the console was able to be optimized for a particular use case; multiple concurrent local users.
I mean, I’m willing to believe that someone could come up with some new use case where consoles are just way better suited, where the hardware has no great applications on the PC. Maybe…oh, I don’t know. Volumetric displays become the norm for TVs, but aren’t physically practical for laptops, so they don’t become the norm for computers. But, he’s talking a lot about potential, not actual cases where this has happened.
I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
What would you have changed from the movies as they were?
I mean, I can’t think of that many deviations from the books off-the-top-of-my-head. Tom Bombadil got cut, but he had a very different flavor from most of the rest of the series. Legolas “shield surfing” was an addition to the movies and was kind of obnoxious, IMHO, but it wasn’t that much of an ongoing thing. There were some changes around Aragorn going through the Paths of the Dead, but nothing there really bugged me.
EDIT: I’m pretty sure that nothing in the books said that the charge of the reinforcements at Helm’s Deep was down that steep of a slope – that’s probably just not practical.
Congress has to authorize spending. The Executive Branch cannot just appropriate funds. But the Executive also has flexibility in spending. Just because Congress authorizes a certain amount of spending doesn’t necessarily entail that the Executive Branch has to spend it.
There are some forms (mostly Social Security and Medicare) where the Executive is mandated to spend money. But outside of that, usually the Executive does have discretion in whether to spend money that Congress appropriates.
All that being said, if what one wants is to reduce government spending, that’s really better directed to Congress. I kind of suspect that this is Trump aiming to make this about him, when it’s really the Congressional races that are more-meaningful.
"We are able to produce something that flies, costs from $350 per item up to something that flies to St Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target this night. This thing flew exactly 1250 kilometers," — Kamyshin said.
“We are able to produce something that flies and costs $350 per item, something that flew to St. Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target that night. This thing flew exactly 1,250 kilometers,” Kamyshin said at a panel discussion of the Deciding Your Tomorrow project in Davos, Switzerland.
Yeah, this is why I was excited about those Australian cardboard drones – as un-sexy as they may be, they are very cheap, and effective air defenses against really cheap drones is not something that we really have today. If Russia wants to build air defense against something that runs $350/unit, it’s going to have to be a lot more cost-effective than what’s out there already. If it costs $3,500/unit to stop something that costs $350/unit to launch, the party launching the drone already wins, even if there is a 100% intercept rate. And that’s before one even gets to the issue that the attacker can generally choose the point of attack, which complicates things for the defender; with static air defenses, the attacker can concentrate their attack to aid in overwhelming defenses, whereas the defender is forced to disperse their defenses or forego defending some things.
I’d also note, though, that this goes both ways: if Ukraine develops a particularly-successful inexpensive drone and puts it into use, then Russia will probably aim to clone it. If one assumes that launching low-end drones is an effective tactic in today’s environment, then I think the real contest becomes who can deploy effective air defenses against low-end drones.
From what I’d read in the past, this is something that had been on the US’s radar prior to Russia’s invasion – China is the world’s dominant producer of (non-military) low-end drones. That’s a dual-use capability that could be put to military ends, and people were already concerned about the possibility of employment of swarms of them; we don’t really have a good counter to that yet.
America’s adversaries, including both state and non-state actors, have developed creative ways of using cheap, commercially available, and easily weaponized drones to assassinate opponents, destroy tanks, wage surprise attacks, smuggle drugs, and even conduct aerial dogfighting. Most recently, extremist groups such as the Houthis in Yemen have used drones to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The democratization of drone technology means that countries, as well as terrorist organizations and “lone wolves,” are now able to conduct attacks with near impunity. This includes attacks against U.S. military forces deployed abroad, America’s commercial interests on land, sea, and air, and even critical infrastructure and population centers on the homeland.
In response to this drone proliferation crisis, the U.S. government has largely focused on a narrow “right-of-launch” approach. This relies on defeating tactical drones after they are en route to their targets with a variety of point and stationary defenses — small-arms fire, arresting nets, dazzling lasers, frequency jammers, and even other drones. This prevailing approach is reflected in the administration’s Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Action Plan, as well as the Department of Defense’s Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy, both of which focus mostly on mitigation technologies.
Yet our research suggests that a right-of-launch strategy is too reactionary. It cedes the initiative to America’s adversaries, and it requires expending costly munitions that are not designed to counter drones. This problem will only worsen as a new generation of drones, enabled by artificial intelligence, begin to collaborate in large numbers to overwhelm stationary and mobile military positions with swarm tactics. Defending every target, right-of-launch, with a “bullet-on-bullet” approach is likely to be technically difficult, costly, and insufficient. The Houthis’ recent drone attacks in the Red Sea are prima facie evidence that America’s current ad hoc and tactical response to these low-cost and easy-to-use capabilities is not working. This is not to say that mitigation efforts are not worth pursuing — the use of microwave energy to disorient and ultimately defeat drones holds particular promise. But this is only part of the solution.
I’m not so much interested in that author’s particular take on what should be done (and I’m not sure that it’s relevant to the Russo-Ukrainian War anyway…I’m not sure that it’s practical to destroy drones in that case before they leave the ground) so much as his summary of the situation today – that is, we really aren’t to the point of having a solid counter yet.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Pentagon’s counter-drone office will focus on neutralizing swarms of unmanned aircraft in its next demonstration planned for June 2024, according to a slideshow displayed during an Aug. 8 presentation by the office’s director.
The proliferation of drones on the battlefield is rising. For example, Ukraine is losing 10,000 per month while defending itself from Russian invaders, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank. Flooding the battlefield with a large number of drones, especially those able to fly in a coordinated fashion, is a threat the U.S. military is still trying to address.
But that will take a layered approach, Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, who leads the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, told an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.
“To get after a large amount of UAS [unmanned aerial systems], because you won’t have enough interceptors … you have to leverage the [electronic warfare] capability, the high-powered microwave,” as well as kinetic interceptors like 30mm guns, he explained.
The counter-drone office released a request for whitepapers from industry on Aug. 4, seeking demonstrations of “fixed/stationary or mobile/mounted Detect, Track, Identify, and/or Defeat (DTID) capabilities against [small UAS] Swarm systems.”
What have you learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine about the use of drones in battle? Has the capacity exceeded your expectations?
What we’ve seen is the validation that the threat is real, the threat is evolving. And we at the DoD are taking this seriously. What we’re seeing in Ukraine really is a validation of what we’re seeing inside of U.S. Central Command’s [area of responsibility]. And our methodology of how to get after this threat is a layered approach integrated in a common C2.
Globally, we’re seeing the threat continues to grow, and you’ll see a range of employment of that threat from large to small amounts, depending on where you are.
Trump seeks Supreme Court pause in 2020 election case (www.bbc.com)
Ex-US President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to suspend a lower court ruling that he does not have presidential immunity from prosecution.
Media: Russia condemns Ecuador's decision to send Russian military equipment to US for Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
Russia's foreign ministry condemned the decision of Ecuador to hand over old Russian-made military hardware from its stocks to the U.S. for use in Ukraine, Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti reported on Feb. 2.
6/10 Ukrainian refugees hope to return, study says (kyivindependent.com)
More than half of Ukrainians surveyed said they plan to return to Ukraine in the future, a 2023 study by Vox Ukraine released Jan. 16 says.
Destruction From Ukraine's First ATACMS Strike Now Apparent (www.thedrive.com)
Jet Ski-Borne Ukrainian Special Ops Raid Shown In New Video (www.thedrive.com)
The newly released video claims to show teams of Ukrainian frogmen, riding jet skis, landing on the shore of Crimea.
Ukraine Aid-Border Security Deal in Congress Likely a Week Away (www.voanews.com)
Netherlands lifts its objection to Bulgaria joining EU's Schengen zone (www.reuters.com)
Dec 15 (Reuters) - The Netherlands has agreed to Bulgaria joining Europe’s passport-free Schengen Zone, the Dutch justice ministry said on Friday, ending its long-held opposition to the move....
Barack Obama running, style of Sin City, with color [Stable Diffusion] (lemmy.today)
(barack obama:.5),running,blue,orange,red, by Frank Miller,style of sin city...
Russia may be plotting a new escalation in the Black Sea, U.K. warns (www.nbcnews.com)
Europe’s gas stocks at record high going into winter 2023/24 (www.reuters.com)
Ukraine Situation Report: Signs Russia's Attempt To Encircle Avdiivka Is Stalling (lemmy.today)
Ukraine Situation Report: Russia Recruiting Serbian Fighters (www.thedrive.com)
Ukraine gets Rheinmetall 155mm shells three times more expensive (bulgarianmilitary.com)
Canada considers sending decommissioned air-to-ground rockets to Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
Canada's opposition Conservative Party asked the government to send tens of thousands of decommissioned rockets to Ukraine instead of destroying them, CBC reported on Feb. 2. The Canadian Defense Ministry has confirmed that the donation is under consideration.
British Air-To-Air Missiles Turned SAMs Seen Scoring Kill In Ukraine (www.thedrive.com)
The improvised mobile SAM systems give Ukraine a highly agile interceptor for swatting kamikaze drones and cruise missiles at short range.
Russia's weapons are "clearly superior" to NATO's, says Putin (www.newsweek.com)
The Russian leader praised his country's arms while meeting with defense industry workers.
Dmitry Medvedev says Ukraine should not exist in any form, calling it a ‘cancerous growth’ — Meduza (meduza.io)
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
Media: Ally of Latvian lawmaker accused of spying for Russia calls allegations 'witch hunt' (kyivindependent.com)
Miroslavs Mitrofanovs is the co-chair of the Latvian Russian Union political party along with Tatjana Zdanoka, the lawmaker accused of spying for Russia.
AfD’s rise in Germany set to disrupt Berlin’s lead in supporting Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
One of Russia's top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to "denazify" this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage. In fact, Russia's public obsession with "fighting Nazis" masks how its closest relations among European political parties are with those on the
Why do you think so many people misuse asklemmy?
It’s not a tech support group FFS!
Mark Cerny: When making consoles, we're not trying to build low-cost PCs. From arcades to architect, the development legend discusses his 42-year career, PS5 surprises and the job of building games co (www.gamesindustry.biz)
What is your unpopular flim opinion
I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Trump plans to claim sweeping powers to cancel federal spending (www.washingtonpost.com)
Minister confirms Ukraine hit 'a target' near St Peterburg with homegrown drone (kyivindependent.com)
"We are able to produce something that flies, costs from $350 per item up to something that flies to St Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target this night. This thing flew exactly 1250 kilometers," — Kamyshin said.