If you're concerned about collateral damage, the Hellfires in the package are probably desirable, as they are accurate and have a fairly small warhead.

I haven't heard of it, but I guess it makes sense. Like, it's not uncommon in the US to drink hot coffee in the morning when it's cold out if you're camping or in an outdoors environment that's hard to heat up. Delivers a big slug of heat directly to someone. But there's no real reason that it has to contain caffeine.

I don't know about Korea or other places, but Japan traditionally didn't go in for house insulation, aimed to use the kotatsu rather than heating the living space as a whole.

Big picture here, I'm not sure how much point there is to putting heavier bollards in.

I don't believe that we're going to seal off every area that a car can reach or someone can plant explosives at and that has a bunch of people in it in the US.

It's also not clear to me that there is a rash of people intent on a repeat job, trying to physically attack vice in New Orleans. Sounds like the perpetrator had a lot of problems and kinda was lashing out at the world solo.

If we do get more incidents, then we've got more data points, okay, maybe do something then.

There are a lot of ways to kill a bunch of people at once if you're set on it and willing to be creative. You can maybe hit some of the most-egregious ones, but you won't get all of them.

I'm gonna be more-generous.

My understanding is that most of the economy in Transnistria is basically there because Russia has been providing highly-subsidized gas, and that if they were paying market rate, a lot of the industry there would simply go under.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#Economy

The economy is based on a mix of heavy industry (steel production), electricity production, and manufacturing (textile production), which together account for about 80% of the total industrial output.

Steel production and electricity production at least are going to be basically driven by access to that gas.

I mean, yeah, it'd probably be efficient for it to go under and for resources and labor tied up in it to shift to something else. But I suppose that they're basically staring at overwhelming and rapid deindustrialization. Like, I would guess that a lot of people in Transnistria are basically looking at the future and seeing a giant gaping void.

I mean, Germany was very much affected by political pressures related to cheap Russian natural gas around the outset of the conflict, and Germany's industry is much less dependent on the gas and has a more-diversified economy.

The place might have a whole ton of other factors involved, ethnic, corruption, Russia buying influence, whatever, but even if you removed that from the picture, and you're just thinking about the perspective of some random person in Transnistria, I can believe that the economic disruption that they're facing from that huge shift is pretty staggering.

They probably need to make plans no matter what, and they probably shouldn't have put themselves in this place, but at this point, I expect that all the options they have are gonna be near-term very bad.

I once knew someone who commuted into NYC each day by rail -- drove to the train station, and went from there. Can move out of NYC and commute in, I suppose. Housing will probably be cheaper. Was a long commute.

that feels really unfair to me.

Well, I mean, the real limited resource that they're charging for is gonna be the available road space, as they're going to be trying to reduce traffic load, I expect, as the road network is just overloaded. I don't know if there'd be a realistic alternative to provide much more road space in Manhattan with the funds. Like, where would you put it? They'd have to bulldoze tall buildings or something.

I'm not sure that the Bob Semple tank deserves the flak it gets, if you consider the context.

When was it produced?

kagis

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/11/bob-semples-tank-new-zealands-homegrown.html

Work began on a prototype at the Temuka PWD Depot in June 1940.

By March 1941, a second tank was finished, and both took part in a parade in Christchurch. One was then sent to Wellington and then on to Auckland to promote the war effort.

So they started June 1940, and while they don't say when the first one was done, but we're into 1941 to get something else out.

So, here's the situation that the Kiwis are facing, because I think it's maybe easy to forget that.

The UK has been badly-beaten in Europe, and may well be conquered in short order.

The UK, the major security provider for New Zealand, has just been overwhelmingly defeated on land in Europe. While many people in the British Expeditionary Force were pulled off in a desperate operation, the British land warfare equipment has been lost, and is largely in the Reich's hands. It is not at all clear that the UK will not surrender or be defeated in short order. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had just given his "We shall fight on the beaches" speech:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.[10]

So he's just raised the likelihood that the UK is about to be invaded. He has raised the possibility that the UK may fall, and that in that scenario, the "Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle", which probably means that land warfare is up to them, along with the remnants of the Royal Navy. That means New Zealand, a tiny country with a then-population of about 1.6 million and not a whole lot by way of heavy industry, much less defense industry. He's telling them to hang on and hope that the New World -- that'd be the US -- intervenes.

Also, keep in mind that even if that happened, while the US had a decent navy, it had a tiny army by European standards then. Germany, while not possessing much by way of a surface navy, had a much larger land army than the US. The US was not going to be doing a great deal on land in the near term, even if it became involved.

That's a pretty heavy burden for a nation with a population a seventh the size of London that was mostly a bunch of farmers.

That's the context in which they're starting work on what makeshift armor they have the ability to produce out of what hardware and industry they have available.

The US will not enter the war for another year-and-a-half. Over 1940, the UK is being bombed in the Battle of Britain, and suffering major shipping losses.

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/second-world-war-at-home/challenges

From early in 1940, New Zealanders began to live in fear of attack or invasion, first by the Germans and later by the Japanese.

By May 1940 the Germans occupied Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and Britain faced the direct threat of invasion. Although appalled by events on the other side of the world, New Zealanders still felt far from the danger zone. But the sense of security was short-lived. German raiders, or armed merchant cruisers, were active in New Zealand waters, laying mines and attacking Allied ships. Their targets were the vessels that sailed to or from the country, transporting troops, freight and passengers. The raiders had some success: in the second half of 1940 they sank four ships in the seas around New Zealand, with the loss of more than 50 lives.

The Germans had other targets in the Pacific. The tiny island of Nauru, a British Commonwealth territory north of the Solomons, exported thousands of tons of phosphate each year to New Zealand, Australia and Britain. The chemical was essential to fertilise farms and grow much-needed food. But German raiders had the phosphate ships in their sights, sinking five of them in early December. The prisoners they took brought the total captured in the Pacific to nearly 700 in the space of six months.

Members of the EPS practise first aid

Then, on 27 December 1940, the German raider Komet bombarded Nauru Island itself, destroying the phosphate plant. The attack provoked a stir in New Zealand. The Defence Force galvanised the Home Guard into action, and civilian authorities also prepared for the worst. Before the war began, the government had devised the Emergency Precautions Scheme (EPS), the forerunner of Civil Defence, to cope with disasters. 'Enemy action' was one of the possible dangers listed in a 1939 EPS booklet, sent out to local authorities. Now, it was decided, the time had come to confront that menace.

The blackout began in coastal areas of New Zealand in February 1941. Black curtains, paper, or even paint, covered windows in most homes. Street lighting was dimmed, making life difficult through the winter nights that followed.

The US would not become involved until the end of 1941, and at that time, its Pacific Fleet suffered a tremendous blow at Pearl Harbor, with many of its major fleet units knocked out of action. Japanese forces were successfully invading and occupying British, Dutch, and American territories all over the Pacific. That's a dangerous neighborhood to be in.

This is the Pacific Theater.

In Europe, open areas and road and rail infrastructure meant that much heavier tanks were in use. In the Pacific Theater, often far lighter tanks were made use of; light tanks and tankettes could make a major difference where they weren't facing heavier vehicles. The US benefited significantly from the amtrac in amphibious assaults, which had even lighter armor than the Bob Semple tank.

https://www.battleforaustralia.asn.au/Tanks_Guadalcanal.php

The ground, and in particular the tank battle was fought by US Marines. Guadalcanal was possibly the first deployment of allied tanks in the jungle (the Japanese had effectively used light and medium tanks in Malaya), in the course of the action in the Solomon Islands the Marines learned the need to protect tanks (particularly light ones) in close country. The lesson was costly but when applied the Stuart (only one made it to the point of battle) was the bunker buster essential to victory in the last major incident of the campaign.

That is a single light tank being used there.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to move over open ground against, say, a machine gun, even a slow, lightly-armored, lightly-armed tank sure beats a WWI-style trench warfare massed charge. And that's the kind of alternative that the Kiwis might have had available to them, not loads of Shermans or whatever.

My guess is that the drones that they're using don't have a payload large enough to obliterate an entire refinery, and that they're doing more-precise targeting of things at a refinery than "hit the refinery somewhere". If Russia could block access to all satellite imagery of the refinery, it'd probably have an impact.

The problem, though, as others have pointed out, is that Ukraine probably doesn't depend on Yandex-provided satellite imagery.

The Soviet-era approach to trying to secure map data was also a lot more elaborate than what's happening here.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-maps-were-faked-for-50-years.html

Soviet Aide Admits Maps Were Faked for 50 Years

Sept. 3, 1988

The Soviet Union's chief cartographer acknowledged today that for the last 50 years the Soviet Union had deliberately falsified virtually all public maps of the country, misplacing rivers and streets, distorting boundaries and omitting geographical features, on orders of the secret police.

In an interview published tonight in the Government newspaper Izvestia, the chief map maker, Viktor R. Yashchenko, said the authorities had agreed to begin releasing accurate maps that have been classified as state secrets since the time of Stalin. Western experts said the maps apparently were distorted out of fear of aerial bombing or foreign intelligence operations.

As one example, American diplomats and correspondents based in Moscow find that the most reliable street map of Moscow is produced in the United States, by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The falsification of Soviet maps, Mr. Yashchenko told Izvestia, began in the late 1930's when the map-making administration was put under control of the security police, then known as the N.K.V.D.

''Even in the post-Stalin time the distortion of generally available maps continued as a requirement of the work of our administration,'' he said. ''This work became senseless with the appearance of space photography,'' which meant foreign countries could make their own extremely accurate maps from satellite data. ''But nevertheless it continued until this year,'' he said.

Choosing one commercial provider, Planet Labs in the US stores and sells current and historical images of world land masses every day.

https://www.planet.com/products/satellite-monitoring/

Planet Monitoring provides near-daily, 3.7-meter resolution imagery covering all of Earth’s landmass.

That's just generally-available commercial stuff, not even military stuff, which I suspect Ukraine gets.

in every possible scenario

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunge_mine

The conical mine body was 11.6 inches (29 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter at its base, weighing 11 pounds (5.0 kg) including the 6.6 pounds (3.0 kg) of crude TNT filling. The three metal legs welded to it were 6 inches (15 cm) long, intended to ensure the proper stand-off distance for the shaped charge to achieve maximum penetration. The 1.25-inch (3.2 cm) diameter handle was 59 inches (150 cm) long and weighed 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg), for an overall length of 78 inches (200 cm) (including the three legs) and weight of 14.3 pounds (6.5 kg).

https://gitnux.org/average-arm-length/

The average arm length of adult males is around 25.4 inches.

So you've got a weapon that has a range of roughly 100 inches, counting arm length and lunge mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Hull length: 26.02 ft

Width: 12 ft

The furthest extent from the tank center that the tank hull will extend is sqrt((12÷2)²+(26÷2)²)=14.3 ft, or about 171 in. So being generous as to angle of impact and weak points, this means that the attacker needs to get within about 272 inches of the center of the tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M256_(tank_gun)

The M256 is an American 120 mm smoothbore tank gun. It is a licensed-built German-designed Rheinmetall Rh-120 L44 gun tube and combustible cartridges with an American-designed mount, cradle and recoil mechanism. It is primarily used by the M1 Abrams main battle tank.

Length: 5,593 mm (220.20 in) (overall)

It looks like, from the gun-forward length of the M1A2 at 32.04 ft, the turret has the gun mounted maybe four feet forward of the center of the tank, so that's another 48 inches.

Thus the tank gun reaches about 268 in from the center of the tank. This is about four inches short of the lunge mine operator's total range, assuming full arm extension.

This is the 1862 US Navy saber bayonet. It has a 25 inch blade:

I don't think that it's too hard to see which era of cavalry forces come out on top here.

I think that it is unlikely that China will do this.

I think that it is more-likely that Beijing will seek to dominate Russia, not to conquer it. China has a 2023 GDP of $17 trillion, Russia of $2 trillion. Russia has ensured that it has to rely on China for various things for at least some time. China doesn't need to invade to see increasing influence in Russia moving forward.

https://jamestown.org/program/russias-fiscal-dependence-on-china-grows/

• As Western sanctions increasingly isolate Russia, it has become highly dependent on China for trade and economic support, particularly in energy exports sold at discounted prices.
• China has capitalized on Russia’s isolation by expanding its investments and economic influence within Russia, with Chinese companies increasing their share of Russian market participation. This economic relationship shows an imbalance, with China benefiting from favorable trade terms.
• Western sanctions and the war in Ukraine have deeply impacted Russia’s economy, as seen in the weakening ruble, increasing reliance on China, and signs of Russia potentially becoming a subordinate economic partner to China rather than an equal.

That's maybe not as evocative as the image of Chinese tanks rumbling into Russia, but I think that it's probably a much more realistic geopolitical issue for Russia.

I imagine Washington and Beijing are probably in some degree of concurrence about US defense contractors not having a supply chain that goes through China.