You think yachts pay for themselves or something? That $120k is getting good value for someone. Perhaps not the Russian taxpayer, but still.
and that is the top-notch part of this drone …
they still use ridiculously outdated ICE-engines - on this - basically a RC-plane - drone …
on the lower end of its parts-list is the repurposed pet-waterbottle as gas tank
honestly, i am pretty sure any determined RC-club could come up with a vehicle on-par (or better) with this innovative russian drone
Some Ukrainians “unboxed one”, and said they could put one together for $3000 , most of which would be spent on cigarettes and snacks.
Institute of War summary April 15-21
The last item is the most important. No nukes expected.
It’s not surprising the Kremlin is claiming a war against NATO. They wouldn’t dream of invading Ukraine. 
Takeaways April 15-21
- Russia and Ukraine are unlikely to resume negotiations in the coming weeks. Both sides await the outcome of Russia’s ongoing offensive in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv likely assesses that its military has the potential to push Russian forces back to their pre-February 24 positions and is unlikely to engage in negotiations until that outcome occurs or becomes significantly less likely.
- The Kremlin is increasingly describing the war in Ukraine as a war with NATO to the domestic Russian audience to explain slower-than-intended operations and mounting casualties.
- The Kremlin likely intends to create one or more proxy states in occupied southern Ukraine to cement its military occupation and set conditions to demand permanent control over these regions.
- Russian and Belarusian officials seek to frame Western sanctions as predominantly harming European economies while playing up the efficacy of their sanction-mitigation efforts.
- The Kremlin is failing to deter NATO expansion and failing to disrupt Ukraine’s military alignment with the West.
- The Kremlin remains unlikely to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine in this phase of the war.
Do keep in mind that Operator Starsky is a Ukrainian Army press officer. While his channel’s relationship with reality is much more cordial than that of Russian propaganda, it is nonetheless most definitely propaganda.
I think you’d need at least $5000 for that UAV now that you’d have to use proxies to buy the cameras, engine, and control electronics and smuggle them into Russia, and that’s before the vodka & cigarette expenses.
Hard to see any set of conditions that gives a Russian victory at this point.
War of attrition? Ukraine wins that one. Ukraine is the one with many millions of willing-to-fight men and women, getting a steady flow of weapons and supplies from NATO while Russia is running out of everything.
War of decisive battle? Based off of the incompetence of Russia thus far, they’d probably botch that too, and Ukraine is getting lots of howitzers and drones that would be great for that. A big aggressive Russian push forward would just see them getting Saint Javelin’d again.
WMDs? Probably Russia’s only hope, since the West would still be too chicken to respond, but the best time for Russia to do that was over a month ago. Why wait til now?
Holy crap, it is the $120,000 drone that was glued and duct taped together. I just thought they looked similar. Now I picture in my mind of an armed Russian drone is going to be carrying one of those round black cartoon bombs with a lit fuse. Which of course they have to light before takeoff. No foreseeable problems there.
Well, you have to set your priorities. And rarely used yachts are much more important than a bunch of guys you sent slogging around a foreign country in the mud.
It’s been top of the front page of the NYT and WaPo since before the invasion. I would say it hasn’t.
I hope you are right, but I have my doubts. Let’s compare the effects of the war in a few issues:
Physical destruction:
Ukrainian cities are being destroyed, totally flattened into rubble. Russia–zero destruction.
Civilian lives ruined:
Tens of millions of Ukrainian refugees are fleeing their homes, many will never return. Russia: zero refugees
Economics:
The Ukrainian economy is at a standstill…no farmland being planted, and even if some crops are raised, there will be no way to transport the harvest. And in the areas “unaffected” by the war, I assume only the basic essentials are working. Suppose you are a Ukrainian businessman–maybe you sell childrens playground equipment to schools. or sell carpet, or real estate, or furniture, or training seminars for corporations, or lawn-care equipment, or you sell space on advertising billboards, etc. Who is going to buy your product while the war is raging?
How long can the civilian population keep their morale, before they start urging their government to agree to a ceasefire?
Russia–apparently the economic sanctions are not really having a big effect yet. Life goes on as normal for most civilians. And for those who do become unemployed --well, the russian government doesn’t give a damn about you, and will keep fighting the war anyway.
My guess is that Russia can hold out longer than Ukraine.
IMHO this is isn’t the correct calculus. The option wouldn’t be a war of attrition vs. a ceasefire. The option would be war of attrition vs. ending up in a gulag in Siberia or outright murdered as we’ve seen in Mariupol.
So, a question, and since we have 150 Ukraine threads already I won’t start a new one:
I was born around the end of the Cold War, so I never knew it firsthand. Were Americans as hostile, feeling-wise, towards the USSR as they are towards Russia right now?
Have you ever heard the expression “Better dead than Red”?
Many believed it. I was pretty close to being one in the early 80s.
More or less. The real difference now is that there seem to be a lot more Americans willing to risk a direct conflict with Russia. For those of my generation (b. 1963), that was understood to mean global annihilation.
Hmm, I was born somewhere in the middle of it. and it ended while I was a young adult. I don’t think the level of animosity then is anywhere near what it is now.
Back then, it seemed to be generally an attitude of “Don’t trust them at all, but as long as they don’t see weakness or too much aggression, they’re unlikely to do anything rash.” Nowadays, since they’ve gone and done something rash, we’re way beyond that.
I was born in 1977. I remember it as more of a time where the US was challenging them to better, the whole “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” and all that. With the wall coming down when I was 12, and the Soviet Union dissolving when I was 14, I looked at it in terms of this is it, they saw the light and ended it as decent people, without firing a shot. Of course now I see that it just so happened that they (the whole world really) got lucky that Gorbachev (the Soviet version of Jimmy Carter?) was an especially decent guy who had the moral courage to do the right thing, and that the same people with a different ruler can act in a much more harmful way.
^ This.
I would say much more so during the Cold War. Today we (Americans and Canadians) are anti-Russia because of their unprovoked atrocities in Ukraine, but back then the Soviet Union was hated and feared as an existential threat to the whole of the Western world, if not the whole world itself. The two major sources of paranoia were the fear of the spread of communism, and the threat of nuclear war. Private citizens were building nuclear fallout shelters in their homes.
Today we have some far-right factions in the US who, for whatever reason, claim to actually be pro-Russia. The whole zeitgeist is not the same at all, though by the time this is all over Russia will likely be a pariah among civilized nations.
which one?
Frankly, as someone who used to fly RC airplanes, including building my own, that drone is… ridiculously outdated. Hobby planes in the US 10 years ago were more sophisticated, and most of 'em were built (or the parts came from ) China so it’s not like the Russians couldn’t have bought a few.
I believe that.
Incorrect - while not as numerous as fleeing Ukrainians there have been thousands of Russians who have left Russia either in protest or in fear of either being drafted into this mess or being imprisoned.