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.
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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