Well, TBH, I doubt Marshal Winter favors the Ukrainians, either. Nature is both sides’ enemy.
But I hope that somehow, the Ukrainians are better equipped and prepared for this. I know that the Russians are reportedly very poorly geared for anything, so perhaps that sets a very low threshold.
Swedish military chiefs sent out a war alert. I guess it was to shake people up that they might be next on the block if Russia finishes in Ukraine, but I don’t see them as a next likely target. I wonder how capable the Swedes are, militarily speaking?
During the Cold War, they had the fifth largest air force in the world. Sweden went on nationwide alert rather frequently back in the day whenever they’d catch a Soviet sub encroaching on their territorial waters; even dropping depth charges. They knew a larger military was needed to stay neutral than was necessary if allied to one of the superpowers.
Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank, noted in a report last year that the Gripen is specifically equipped to counter Russia’s fighter and surface-to-air missile radar…
“Maybe most importantly, Gripen was from the start designed to counter the threat from Russia.”
I have a drone pilot license for work. There absolutely are regulations about where and at what altitude drones can be flown. I use an app called B4UFLY to find exclusion zones. Here’s a link to a screen shot of the Fort Knox area. The military base itself is restricted. The circles are typically around airports/heliports which also have restricted operations. If I work within one of those zones I have to call air traffic control for permission to fly.
Putin’s War Is Changing How People Speak in Ukraine
Most Ukrainians are fluent in Russian and Ukrainian because Russian culture was widespread during the days of the Soviet Union. However, the study’s results showed a dramatic shift from the use of the Russian language to Ukrainian after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022…
There is evidence that the Russian language was becoming less popular in Ukraine even before the war, following the annexation of Crimea in 2013/2014. The findings by Racek and his team suggest that the current conflict has caused a sharp uptick in those using Ukrainian.
A court in Russia’s Primorsky region has handed down a seven-year prison sentence for murder to a local man named Maksim Volkovoy, who was previously imprisoned in a separate murder case before joining the war in Ukraine, reportedly as part of Wagner Group.
According to investigators, after Volkovoy returned from the war, he got into an argument with an acquaintance while drinking at a friend’s house and ended up beating and stabbing the man to death with chairs, a knife, and a bat.
Soon he will have to fight in Ukraine again so he can return a condecorated free man so he can go to a friend’s house and have a drink in peace errr… never mind. BTW: For a first murder: eight years sentece. For the second murder: seven. Life is cheap in Russia, and so killing.
I’m not sure what time period is meant by “before the war, following the start of the war”. This war didn’t start in February of 2022.
Ukrainians started turning away from the Russian language after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and they’ve been increasingly communicating in their own language since the start of the current war.
The start of the current war was the annexation of Crimea.
Modern militaries have been looking to the war in Ukraine as a proving ground for advanced weapons. But observers in China hoping to study Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles — one of the most-hyped tools in Beijing’s own arsenal — are signaling they won’t learn much from Moscow…
“There is more and more evidence showing that what the US and Ukraine say on this matter is true,” the Chinese defense analyst Yin Jie wrote in November…
The Kinzhal, they concluded, just wasn’t the star that Moscow made it out to be…
The Kinzhal, this separate analysis said, was at best a “marginal hypersonic missile.”
“Although Russia calls the ‘Dagger’ a hypersonic missile, analysts from other countries generally believe that the so-called hypersonic ‘Dagger’ missile is actually an air-launched version of the ‘Iskander’ short-range tactical ballistic missile,” it said.
It doesn’t sound like NATO believes Russia’s military is significantly degraded. I just posted a link to technology advances coming out of the war in Ukraine. The battlefield is changing fast and a lot is being tested in Ukraine.
The big concern is what happens to the massive over 400k Russian army currently in Ukraine after that war ends? Especially if Western support collapses and Ukraine falls. That puts Russian troops all along Poland’s border.
It’s interesting that Steadfast Defender 2024 will include a focus on defending Poland.
Ukranian drones are hitting oil depots and other valuable buildings in Russia. And this article says that “once the Kremlin halted intensive fighting in Ukraine, Moscow “may need as little as six to 10 years to reconstitute its armed forces”, and the Nato alliance would have be prepared to fend off a Russian attack.” Scary.
No info from the US? WTH? The US is supposed to be leading not trailing along sucking on the cow’s hind tit.
UK is sending 20k troops.
Link for those who didn’t grow up on farms. 
Suck hind tit - Idioms by The Free Dictionary
You seem to mistake “announcing which units” for “maybe won’t send any units”.
You do you, but a calmer less reactionary attitude to something that’s still 13 to 17 months in the future and isn’t actually about war, but about political posturing for deterrence, may serve to reduce your ulcers and lower your blood pressure.
The news said Steadfast Defender 2024 runs Feb to to June. That’s 3 weeks away and the Stars and Strips was published Jan 16.
I’m confident the US is participating and units are already prepared to deploy. They just haven’t announced anything yet.
I know it seems odd this is 2024. The years are flying by quickly.
D’oh!!!
Thank you. As you can see I was still mentally in 
2023. 
I’m still adjusting too. At least my days of writing checks for the wrong year are behind me. I haven’t wrote one in quite awhile
One aspect of this is that it’s a deployment exercise, not just an FTX.
“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via trans-Atlantic movement of forces from North America,” [Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. Europe Command and supreme allied commander Europe for NATO] said in a press briefing Thursday.
Hard to know the scope since US participation is still not publicly inventoried, but the duration would allow for something akin to the Cold War REFORGER exercises (aka “sprint across the Atlantic”).
Also: The original Stars and Stripes article is paywalled for anyone who’s read more than a few freebie articles there this… week? Year?
The $ cost must be high. But it’s important to exercise the logistics of supplying a large force and actually using the military hardware.
It’s significant they choose a winter exercise.
I didn’t realize Stars and Stripes has a paywall. There were several google hits for Steadfast Defender 2024.