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's a very difficult decision for Russia, because they have two choices if Poland marches into Lvov: either a) start the drone and missile strikes on them immediately to ensure that they cannot easily entrench themselves and risk an outright war between Russia and NATO (with the Finnish border now being armed too) or b) don't strike them and leave them be, which means they will likely creep their NATO forces eastwards in a microcosm of the last 30 years, until they're occupying basically everything and you're essentially forced into a ceasefire because you can't hit anything safely, or then start hitting a now comfortably entrenched NATO force in Ukraine.
It feels like if Russia wants to keep Ukraine out of NATO then the only option they really have is a). Possibly with a simultaneous offensive from the Belarusian border down towards western and central Ukraine with the full force of the Russian army, no more SMO bullshit. If NATO is allowed to occupy everything west of the Dniper, or even everything that isn't in the four occupied oblasts, then Russia will have lost the Ukraine War. Not the wider war against the West, but certainly the Ukraine War. Obviously I have far from full information, maybe the Russian economy and populace isn't ready, but I wouldn't be surprised if Putin hits the war button if NATO advances into Ukraine.
Do you think this would this require additional mobilizations or just a higher tolerance for casualties?
Both. The current Russian force (as in, the full 300k mobilized + troops that were there before; only the Russians know how many troops are actually fighting in Ukraine and not still in training) is probably not able to carry out of the kinds of maneuvers that would be necessary and hold the territory they've taken; and you cannot do an offensive without accepting a large loss of life on your side.
But the entire situation of the Russian army - not just what's in Ukraine, but across the entire territory of Russia and the borders and such - confuses me and I don't know if they would consider this a sufficient emergency to bring their standing army, such that it exists, to bear. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be moved to the front in the event of a NATO war (I mean, what else could you possibly be waiting for, an invasion across the Bering Strait?) but this is a kind of intermediate situation so idk.
I imagine, in fact I'm certain, that the Russians have been planning and wargaming this eventuality out, so there shouldn't be too much improvisation nor panicked, confused, or uncertain moves, but few plans survive contact with the enemy and all that. I mean, there were probably people in the Russian military wargaming the Ukraine conflict out for years before 2022, and it still wasn't exactly the most organized force in history, even if the stories are exaggerated by the West.
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Hitting Polish troops in Ukraine wouldn't activate article 5. I do think the Belarus force would swing down to cut off polish forces if they moved in.
My feeling is that most of Europe is sick of the war and scared of what happens if it escalates beyond Ukraine. Its pretty obvious that Poland has no business putting troops in Ukraine unless it wants to activly antagonize Russia. If Poland did have NATO's blessing and backing then there really isn't a way to stop WW3 because NATO will always push the limit.
As the situation develops I think Russia will make more direct threats and solidify the red line. USA will probably try to goad Poland into it by promising "Unlimited Aid" and Poland will think about how great that worked for Ukraine. Poland will back down or be talked down by Europe telling them they wont go to bat for them.
If I were Putin would privately signal that Poland, Slovakia and Romania would get some of their historical claims on Ukraine as a negotiated settlement between Russia and NATO. Then in negotiations they'd be forbidden from putting troops there (like the German Rhineland between WW1&2) as a sort of early warning system of aggression.
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maybe they learned their lesson? :P
It’s hard to consider a country that annexes the richer half of a target nation to have “lost” a war.
History would certainly not describe a nation in that position as such.
Didn't you hear? History's over.
Okay, I take that back, Russia won't have lost the war but it depends on how much NATO takes over in any hypothetical situation.
If it's limited to purely a couple western Ukrainian oblasts then that's not ideal for Russia but still a pretty clear overall victory for them; if it's a half-and-half split demarcated by the Dniper then that's much worse but could ultimately be tolerable (and we'll be seeing discussions about who really won the war for years to come); if NATO advances to every oblast except Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk, then that puts NATO right on the Russian border and the closest that the West has been to Moscow since WW2, and essentially means that Ukraine has joined NATO, even if it's under the guise of some kind of weird annexation and not the Ukrainian state proper
but the last situation seems unthinkable (and perhaps not even possible, again, I don't know what the current state of the NATO military is but I can't imagine it's stellar given the rates of attrition) so it's not really worth pondering. and others have given good arguments for why even the first hypothetical probably wouldn't happen so this is all just a mental exercise
Eastern Ukraine is the richer half of Ukraine?
By far. It's where all the industry is. The regions were originally appended to Ukraine inside the USSR in order to help the whole of Ukraine benefit from the industrial output of Donetsk, Luhansk, etc.