Ukrainian soldiers ready themselves for the upcoming counteroffensive:
Well, you wouldn’t want those Ukrainian bullies to attack peace-loving Russian territory, would you? You’d have to keep some troops around.
And gee, look at that, none of them even has a gun aimed at them! Amazing what an army can do when they actually want to fight.
You generally don’t need to threaten to shoot people to get them to do training ops.
Chinese electronics now being found in Russian weapons.
Intelligence gathered by Ukrainian experts from the battlefield and shared with Reuters, however, stated that Chinese-made components were found in a navigation system in Orlan aerial drones that had previously used a Swiss system.
The experts also reported finding Chinese parts in the fire control system in Russian tanks that had earlier used French-made parts.
This strikes me as being mundane and unsurprising; China is a major exporter of electronics.
The offensive around Bakhmut remains the war’s hot spot but we are approaching the time of the ground drying and likely increased offensives and operational mobility. If Ukraine does launch a major offensive, the question is whether they’ll heave it at Bakhmut or drive southeast to try to cut Russian lines between Crimea and the eastern front.
It looks like the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not targeting Oleshky Sands, as I’d been hoping the Russians would be thinking. The Bradley IFVs arrived in Europe painted in desert color scheme, but now appear to be being repainted in Ukrainian pixel camouflage scheme.
Yes, but they claim to be not supplying Russia with weapons or anything that enables them. Clearly they are (or at least, some factories there are and the Chinese govt doesn’t care).
“Anything that enables weapons” is an awfully broad category. Remember back in the Iraq War, when hawks were citing sheet aluminum as evidence that Iraq was making WMDs?
How general-purpose are the Chinese electronics that they’re finding? Nowadays most chips are general, because it’s cheaper to use economies of scale on one chip that can do anything, than it is to make small runs of more specialized chips.
I’m not so sure about that last part. I’d be happy to be corrected, but every news story I’ve seen has the Chinese saying “we’re neural, we won’t supply weapons to either side.” Nothing about “or anything that could conceivably be re-purposed as a weapon.”
Which of course is a loophole big enough to drive a T. Rex-standing-on-a-truck through. Because Russia has no issue building 98% of their missiles, but they didn’t get their fabs up to spec in time and do have an issue building the chips for the guidance systems. But insomuch as they can probably use the chip out of a microwave oven in a pinch, it doesn’t take much to dodge that provision. Russia doesn’t need howitzers, they need commercial electronics and civilian-standard will do for a lot of stuff.
As long as China or anyone else isn’t cutting off ALL trade, they’re going to be supplying Russia with military supplies, knowingly or not.
Integrated circuits perform a function. An AND gate multiplies two inputs, 00=0, 01=0, 1*1=1, whether it is in a dishwasher or a nuclear weapon.
I guess they are trying to fool the Russians into thinking it’s just a big Lego set.
Pixelated camouflage is the new big thing in hiding things.
From that same story:
China has repeatedly denied sending military equipment to Russia since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The assault triggered Western sanctions, including on sending military and dual-use technology such as microchips that could be used in either ordinary appliances or weapons.
So, as those items found are being used in weapons, at a minimum they are clearly breaching sanctions. Not to mention:
US intelligence leaks disclosed by US Air Force National Guard member Jack Teixeira included the fact that Russia’s agency SVR reported China’s Central Military Commission had “approved the incremental provision” of weapons and wanted it kept secret, the Washington Post reported.
Oh, yeah - absolutely. But China is not in the West and never signed on with sanctions and has been pretty pissed the U.S. has been sanctioning Chinese companies for trading with Russia (electronics firms of course 
).
So China is “we’re neutral, we’re not supplying anyone with weapons - just being capitalists like you taught us Uncle Sam and all your sanctions crap is bullshit.” It’s disingenuous as hell of course, but their hypocrisy is in pretending to be neutral, not evading sanctions that they never agreed to in the first place.
That’s a story from 7 years ago, and it begins “Over the last two decades or so…”
The US Army began switching away from pixelated camo in 2015: Operational Camouflage Pattern - Wikipedia
The date was hidden very well.
The real problem with the Army’s pixelated uniform wasn’t that it was pixelated, but that it was meant to be a dual purpose woodland/desert neutral kind of pattern (the “Universal Camouflage Pattern”), which is absurd, because that’s not how camo works. Making it “universal” actually makes it “nowhere.” The USMC, by contrast, has been using digitized camo (MARPAT) for over 20 years now.
I’ve never been good at keeping up with current fashion trends!
I’m still hoping that dazzle camouflage from World War I makes a comeback:
Here’s how it would look on a tank, as seen on a WWII-era Soviet T-34-85 that’s installed in London, UK:
Well, today I learned about a cool new thing, so thank you!