CapricornNoble

Their tactics have settled to extremely-small infantry infiltrations across almost the entire frontline. Warfare has evolved and concentrated mechanized assaults have been abject failures for both sides; it's far too easy to mass fires than it is to mass maneuver forces (see additional commentary (1) at the bottom). Russia's ground strategy is probably the least-risky way for them to keep pressure on the defenders and husband their own resources.

> their lack of manpower is exactly why I think Europe should come to their aid.

Be the change you want to see in the world: https://ildu.mil.gov.ua/news/how-join-armed-forces-ukraine

(1) Normally I would blame both air forces for lacking the capacity to systemically disrupt the defender at all depths.....but if we look at the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, the Israeli air force has total air dominance and their heavy mechanized forces are still struggling to advance. FPV drones basically quadruple the range of every ATGM team at 10% of the price.

Ukraine has been gaining some open fields, while losing major urban areas. Kostyantynivka just fell and Russian troops are securing the high ground overlooking the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomerate. Pokrovsk also fell faster than expected, suggesting that Ukraine increasingly lacks the infantry manpower density to defend urban terrain.

> As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia.

European support doesn't rectify Ukraine's critical vulnerability: manpower...or a lack thereof. Although Euro governments seem like they might start deporting military-age Ukrainian males back to Ukraine so they can be forcibly conscripted....because sending men to their deaths against their will screams "Western liberal values", or something.

> I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot

Russian analysts have been coming on Western alt-media outlets warning that Russian hardliners are increasingly advocating for striking logistics and military production sites in Europe. HistoryLegends has a good video about how France, one of the more experienced and expeditionary European countries, absolutely struggled to even get a brigade into Romania for an exercise. Europe could definitely send air support.....but do you think European citizens are ready for their cities to eat Oreshniks (at a minimum) as a response?

> I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.

There isn't enough combat engineering vehicles in all of Europe to clear lanes through the Surovikin Line. The Ukrainians already learned this the hard way in summer 2023.

Ask your favorite LLM for a brief tutorial on "NATO unit symbology" and "logistics-related operational terms and graphics". The relevant publication is "MIL-STD-2525D". https://www.jcs.mil/portals/36/documents/doctrine/other_pubs...

Some of us were paying attention as early as the 2016-17 Battle of Mosul, when ISIS was using DJI drones to drop grenades into the turret hatches of Iraqi uparmored Humvees. Others started to notice during the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, when Azeri UAV superiority dominated Armenian ground forces. But all of these professionals were like the military officers who observed the Boer Wars, and the Russo-Japanese War, and then wrote in the military journals of their day about how machineguns were gonna change warfare in a very bad way.

Flag officers still slept-walked into the carnage of WW1 trench warfare....shrug. "History doesn't repeat but it rhymes."

Any Chinese HN members able/willing to benchmark one of these with some open models and share the results?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/8/kamala-harris-says-...

I kick myself every time I fail to place bets on Polymarket. When I heard her say that, I said to myself:

* "Not Russia, which has nuclear parity and now a massively-experienced (if preoccupied) conventional army? Not China, which dwarfs our production capacity and clearly intends to push us out of the West Pacific? Iran, really? So.....we are definitely going to war with Iran after the election. Kamala will lose the election but it won't matter. She has no independent thoughts in her head....which means The Decision-Makers have already decided what needs to happen, and gave her talking points to that effect." *

I coulda made a fortune. -_-

EDIT: And if I had to pick a Nazi symbol I think most people don't recognize, I'd go with the Black Sun.[2]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Hunters-SS-Sonderkommando-Dirle...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_(symbol)

[1] https://archive.org/details/karlsson-thomas-uthark-nightside...

[2] https://www.84cxrarebooks.com/pages/books/090763/t-ketola-th...

[3] https://www.miskatonicbooks.com/product/thursakyngi-iv-svart...

As an American expat this is laughable to me, plenty of my peers shit on the US government in general and Trump's administration in particular.

As someone who bought an HTC Dream / Android G1 when it was new, and wishes more handhelds had a similar form factor, this comment depresses me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream

This is the exact same nonsense that Netanyahu said to the US Congress in 2002, when he insisted we invade Iraq. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_PDpwL8kuY

And what is the "Islamic threat", exactly? Why would attacking Iran end that threat, when the perpetrators of 9/11, for example, were mostly Saudis?

Entirely rational, given their desire for sovereignty and avoiding getting bombed to oblivion.

> Iran has stated it would like to destroy the US and Israel.

The linguistic nuance of the slogan "Death to America" has been articulated and clarified over a decade ago.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khame...

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/what-does-death-america-r...

>Israel is an outpost of Western democracy and our ally.

The former is a meaningless characteristic when said democracy commits a genocide and runs an apartheid state (hard to deny with the recent capital punishment law exclusively for Palestinian prisoners). Hardly model behavior for anyone else in the region to emulate. The latter is meaningless since this ally only ever drags us into problems, almost all of which are of its own making.

> Cooperation between Israel and its neighbors would be a great asset to the world economy.

It's easier to cooperate with your neighbors when you stop squatting on their territory, or stop massacring them.

>but it is not mysterious why we might care.

I think "people who care" should volunteer to serve in the IDF, and leave the rest of America out of it. Kinda like the various low-friction pipelines for people to go fight/die for Ukraine without committing US Service Members to such a wasteful endeavor.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/gamaan-iran-polling-regime-cha...

How do you square this with the absolutely massive pro-government rallies that we've seen all across Iran for the entire duration of the conflict? Millions of Iranians opposed to the regime, in a country of 90 million+, might still be a fringe minority.

If you asked some American expat their thoughts on MAGA, and they responded "China should bomb MAGA rallies so we can be free from the Republican party, my whole family in the US agrees".....that person would be considered a fringe lunatic, even if Trump's regime has record-low approval like it does now (and rightly deserves, I hope he is impeached and jailed).

What news are YOU reading?

https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nucle...

"As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement," Gabard wrote in an opening statement ahead of the hearing.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/03/19/ken...

Joe Kent, who made big news when he stepped down on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that intelligence assessments did not show Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States or was close to developing a nuclear weapon, undercutting central justifications for the military action.

>You aren't calling for prosecution of the perpetrators of Oct 7. That is already shows your colors.

The world did not start on October 7th, and it's completely disingenuous to suggest otherwise, which shows YOUR colors. I could equally state " all responsibility lies with the perpetrators of the Nakhba".

>Anyway, the number of killed you cite comes directly from Hamas (its Ministry of Health stated those numbers to UN). Hamas is a terrorist org, and can't be trusted at all.

If the number can't be trusted, why is the IDF acknowledging it?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-believes-70000-gazans-kill...

> There is no evidence that Israel killed civilians in any meaningful numbers, and that the killings were criminal and not legitimate collateral.

If this is your position no further discussion is needed. There is nothing meaningful to be gained from engaging with you. I don't know if you guys realize how insane you appear to every other human being on the planet when you try to gaslight us into thinking the piles of evidence of dead women and children either doesn't exist or is somehow accidental.

My professor from my graduate program and his family are all Iranian. It's no surprise that they anti-regime: his wife's uncles were generals in the Shah's army, and were "disappeared" during the Revolution. They've been living in Japan for ~40 years. Hardly indicative of the opinion of the "man on the street" in Tehran, Isfahan, or Mashhad.

Do you have some solid sources on the ground to the contrary?

To complicate adversary targeting priorities. If you have to shift your pre-planned bombing sorties away from, say, local Basij HQ buildings, it takes pressure off of the Iranian government. Assigning aircraft to find/fix/target/track/engage "underwater drone launch points" is probably like searching for a needle in a haystack given the size of Iran's coastline.

This is considered the most "pro-Russian" sub-Reddit, so it balances the Anglosphere deluge of pro-Ukrainian material pretty well. The most important poster is u/HeyHeyHayden, who's content is so important another user built a site to archive it: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pfjpx...

Hayden mostly compiles battlefield progress from Suriyak Maps (reputable Russian mapper) and AMK_Mapping (reputable pro-Ukrainian mapper). I think you can find both of them on Twitter.

On Youtube, I recommend WillyOAM (Australian infantryman turned journalist), MarkTakacs (Hungarian infantry officer who makes tactical analysis vids), Daniel Davis Deep Dive (retired US Army LtColonel, Desert Storm vet), and HistoryLegends (meme-heavy but generally well-researched battlefield progress vids).

Israel's regime has killed twice that many in Gaza. Shouldn't they be prioritized for "punishment"?

I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's a very different experience compared to the nightmares I read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.

I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: ( https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ). Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears it apart 6 months from now to build something from her imagination, mission accomplished.

I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe this is closer to what you expect? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some point....for myself, not for my kids!

For what I spent buying JUST ( https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-roc... ) last year for my daughter,

I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they are difficult to seat properly on studs because the legs are at a slight angle (almost like manspreading).

I have to stop myself from going on a spending spree on AliExpress, I might order an entire Age of Sail LEGO navy.

2. There's a lot of domestic political/information suppression in Ukraine but I consider this somewhat normal for a nation in a pretty existential conflict.

3. The Ukrainian military is 70-80% conscripts, increasingly of the "forcibly mobilized" variety (look up "TCC busification" for examples), with almost all military-age males banned from leaving the country. Dudes are getting beaten up, stuffed into vans, and sent to trenches to eat Russian artillery and FABs (air-to-ground bombs)....against their will. I think that definitely counts as suppression.