Russia's defensive lines are 'much more complex and deadly than anything experienced by any military in nearly 80 years,' retired general says
businessinsider.com
A former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine said the fighting in the Eastern European country was much worse than that in those other countries. David Bramlette told The Daily Beast that he had air support, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The worst day in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great day in Ukraine," he said.
Because there were no wars with extensive trench warfare after WW2. It was always insurgents vs regular military, or insurgents vs other insurgents. Now there is regular military on both sides, and they had 1.5 years to dig fortifications and cover every flat piece of land with mines and tripwires.
I'd put the Korean war into the regular military vs regular military category.
True. If any side tries to cross established battle lines, they'll get similarly huge losses.
On the other hand it's Koreans, they'll send an army of robot dogs named Zerg.
I wonder if we could use data from satellites and develop an AI program to extrapolate where possible mines might be placed based on previously found mine locations using video and geo-spatial data along with real-time verification to improve modeling.
Or would that be too practical and not make enough money?
Aaah, the occasional AI bro.
The problem isn't knowing roughly where mines could be, people are good at that and you don't need an AI for this. The problem is knowing precisely where mines are, which is something AIs won't help with.
Imagine being the grad student who has to go out and collect real training data because your advisor thought it might be interesting
This.
Even if some AI or algorithm could tell you that a certain area was less likely to be heavily mined, then what would prevent the opposing force from using similar tools to also identify the weak points?
It's easy, there are mines everywhere. No need for an AI.
Alt source:
This is why I’m so surprised they didn’t pull a left hook through Russian territory and envelop their flank.
Good idea, but Ukraine isn’t “allowed” to use western weapons on Russian soil. Pure bullshit, Russia will escalate regardless.
Yes because if Ukraine threatens to gain territory within Russia's historic (pre-2014) border they will absolutely use nuclear weapons. They've made this clear, and honestly, they didn't have to.
No nuclear power has ceded any significant territory through open conflict since the advent of nuclear weapons. China won't, France won't, Russia won't, Pakistan won't, North Korea won't, the U.S. won't. It doesn't even have to be spoken out loud to be a known factor. If the deterrent of nuclear strikes won't protect your border, then you have absolutely nothing to lose by using them if you are even slightly concerned that you couldn't move the border back conventionally.
I'm not sure it's guaranteed that they would use nuclear weapons. The west and the rest of the world wouldn't stand idly by if that happened.
They have to. If you don't respond to territorial loss with nuclear weapons you have signalled to anyone with two brain cells that it's all up for grabs. If Ukraine can grab territory why can't Finland? Latvia? Estonia? China?
If Ukraine was obviously and clearly using Russian soil to take back their own and no more, then I think that would muddy the waters a bit.
Because Russia is the aggressor in this conflict? It's not like Ukraine decided to invade Russia for fun. Mind you I don't necessarily think that will matter to Putin, but it does make it a bit more gray than you're implying