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.
This is beginning to feel like some kind of real-life DnD campaign, where the DM is the feds + journalists, and the players are the general public
DM: "Boom! The Nord Stream pipelines explode. They release natural gas into the atmosphere and the primary gas link from Russia to Germany is now out of order."
Players: "But who did it?"
DM: "Russia, probably. Putin's just that insane."
Players: "No, that doesn't make any sense, why would Russia blow up their own pipeline? That cost them a lot of money! They could have just shut it off!"
DM: "...shit, yeah. Well, look, I don't-- there's an investigation ongoing now. Can we move on with the story now?"
Players: "...okay, but I don't like it. I wanna know who did it."
(a few months pass)
Players: "Hey, one of my friends suggested that it was the United States that did it! It makes sense, because obviously the US has been talking about how much they don't like the pipelines for years now, and they have the technology and manpower to do it!"
DM: "Fuck. Shit. We're talking about this again? I didn't really have any ideas on how to wrap up this plotline so I just forgot about it. Uh, your friend is a fucking idiot. Actually, I'll tell you who did it. fuck, I need to invent a narrative now, I didn't expect them to go down this path... It was the... uhh... the... ...Ukrainians? Well, not the Ukrainians per se, maybe like a group allied to them, I don't know, maybe the government has something to do with it? There's, uh, a... yacht? And a few guys, maybe like six of them, and they took explosives out to the pipelines and blew it up."
Players: "That makes literally no sense whatsoever for a variety of reasons."
DM: "Okay, fine! It wasn't a yacht! Actually, yeah, the yacht was just a distraction, it was actually a bigger boat. I'm so smart and good at DMing, holy moly."
Players: "No, the problem isn't really the boat, although it is also the boat, it's the entire narrative you've constructed."
DM: "Fine! I'll need some time to create a better narrative! Can we just move on with the story now? And stop talking to your fucking friend!"