Attention: Total Must Read By Simplicius
I’m not even going to try to summarize this important article by Simplicius. It’s just mind blowing. The overall theme, in a certain sense, could be said to run like this: What we think we know about the war becomes outdated almost overnight. Well, certainly from year to year. And for those wondering why the war drags on, this is the answer.
Solving the Drone Dilemma: Can Russia Succeed?
SIMPLICIUS
MAR 21, 2025
The face of the Ukrainian conflict continues to change, and many analysts and commentators alike are stuck interpreting the battlefield with an outdated model. Others stick to deficient generalities, based on vague cliches about drones, ignoring the subtle nuances at play on the frontline. Let us take a look and examine where the real war stands today, with a focus on answering the ultimate question on everyone’s mind: can Russia still “decisively” win this war which, in the eyes of many, is trending toward an entropic drone stalemate in perpetuity?
i.
To answer that question, we must examine the current on-the-ground realities, rather than rehashing out-of-date tactics from last year or the year before. One example of popularly repeated-but-dated information, is that artillery still accounts for ~90% of casualties, or thereabouts. While neither is it true that drones inflict 90% of casualties as some pro-Ukrainians swear, it is likewise no longer true that artillery dominates to such an extent as it did even a year ago, let alone further back. It’s difficult to determine the exact percentage, but at this point it would not be unreasonable to suggest that somewhere between 40-60% of deaths are drone related.
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This is also why a war on Iran—a leader in drone technology—could become a nightmare.
Putin has paced his military with the support of his public.
Initially hesitant to fight their neighbors and fellow countrymen.
Russia has the firepower to whip everyone and will if needed.
Putin has built 30,000 Churches since Jan 2000.
He has publicly vowed to defend Christian Russia with his entire nuclear arsenal.
Fair Warning
We can talk about drones all you want, and the technology has certainly improved great deal.
But I tend to focus on the fact that Russia has technologically more advanced missile systems than the United States and NATO.
So far, Putin has used those rather sparingly, but if it comes down to it, he could literally destroy the rest of Ukraine with hypersonic missiles and kinetic energy bombs. On top of that he could take out key NATO installations with the same technology. Don’t think for a moment that he would loan that technology to Iran to finally make an example out of Israel and take it out completely.
The interesting part about all of that is Russia doesn’t have to use nuclear weapons to achieve its goals. The kinetic energy bomb is the breakthrough weapon. Now that will do the same kind of destruction, but with no residual radiation problems.
I don’t think our military experts are looking at that close enough. We don’t have that technology. We don’t have the capability of coming up with it anytime soon. We are having problems just trying to resupply all of the mutations and arms that we have given Ukraine and Israel over the last three years that have depleted our resources. We do not have the manufacturing base at this point to manufacture all of the replacements we need plus extra if we were to try to stage a field army anywhere.