Image from this article - and much of this thread's preamble adapted from it.
After the most recent failure of Lockheed Martin's ARRW project, which sought to be America's first true hypersonic weapon, the missile prototype is being abandoned. One reason for its failure might have been its unnecessary complication, with many subsystems and thus many points of failure. Another factor may be that these projects are being rushed as China and Russia's advantage grows in this field.
The other hypersonic missile being developed under the USAF is the HACM, which uses a different concept, and is smaller, allowing it to be carried by more types of aircraft. The Department of Defense has chosen the Australia-based company Hypersonix to develop these hypersonic weapons, which could reach Mach 7. The AUKUS alliance thus becomes an even more important one for the United States, with Australia both being a potential source of their first hypersonic missiles, and being a vassal country in the Pacific from which the American Empire can attempt to contain China.
In the meantime, American copium continues to grow over how hypersonic missiles really aren't THAT important, and how Russian ones don't even work as they increasingly batter Ukraine. At the same time, Russian development and production of their existing hypersonic missiles (the Kinzhal, Zircon, and Avangard) continues to accelerate. And that's not even mentioning China's hypersonic missiles, a large advantage against the US's aircraft carrier fleet in the event of a war.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
April 3rd's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 5th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 8th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
It would be a more interesting propaganda line if they didn't literally just copy the "Bakhmut has served its purpose" rhetoric from the Russians and the Wagner group, who had been saying before the western media started paying attention that the Ukrainians were being killed by the tens of thousands and their equipment destroyed and this was why they were in no particular hurry to take the town. Having to steal and invert the propaganda is very lazy and shows that the alphabet boys are not sending their best narrative writers.
Though it does make discussions of Bakhmut, like everything else in this war, very frustrating to have actual discussions about because there's one group of people who are in one completely separate reality where 5 Russians die for every Ukrainian and Wagner conscripts are being sent on human wave attacks against overwhelming Ukrainian strength and this is the master plan of the Ukrainian government to cause Russia's collapse, and the actual reality where the ratio is the other way around and though Ukrainians aren't doing human wave attacks per se, we do know that the people being sent in are recently called up reservists with a life expectancy that is measured in days, not weeks, whose role is purely to fire a rifle for 10 seconds into the mist before being hit by an hours-long artillery barrage that will in the best case scenario give them permanent brain damage
It's at least vaguely comforting to know that none of these narratives really matter, like all of this is just a pointless battle of words and commentaries and narratives while material reality plays itself out and Russia will be the ultimate victor if trends continue no matter how many retweets a twitter topic saying that 1.3 quintillion Russian tanks have been destroyed and Russia has been out of ammo since the day after this war started, but waiting for all this to resolve itself to the point where people have to admit that reality is reality and then work towards the future from there rather than remain living in their elaborate fantasy worlds where Russian collapse is just a few days away is proving to be a very drawn out process.
It's like an infinitely ascending shepard tone and sometimes it feels like as the war continues, rather than admitting that this is going to be a long and very bloody war in which the West cannot compete logistically with Russia in a land war on Russia's border, and no matter what happens on the battlefield, no matter how far Ukraine pushes back Russia, this will remain true and thus the ultimate victor has already been decided, people instead become increasingly hooked on narratives that the other side will buckle, they will collapse, they'll be able to march to the Dniper/Russian border soon, just a few more days, just another week, they're almost out of missiles, they're almost out of planes, they're almost out of ammo, they're almost out of manpower, they're almost exhausted, their economy is about to collapse, just another week or two, please just believe me, just hang on another few days... Mercouris does this though I think he's gradually, very gradually learning from his mistakes, so do others on the pro-Russian side, and so do many, many people on the pro-Ukraine side.
real mid-2004 Iraq War vibes
deleted by creator
Exactly this.