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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1343 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 29, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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In the last few hours there has been a massive drone attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Apparently drone swarms were smuggled into Russia in cargo trucks and released a short distance from the airfields. Some of the bases attacks are more than 4,500 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian MOD claims that 34 percent of Russias’s strategic air force has been destroyed. This is an unconfirmed number, but there are multiple videos of groups of 4-7 TU-95 bombers burning on their airfields.

Seems like the numbers were exaggerated with 2 of the attacks randomly detonating en route and another getting blocked by random civilians. Maybe 10 destroyed / damaged. Still pretty crazy though, not an attack that will change the outcome of the war but it could lead to countries tearing up / rethinking a lot of current nuke agreeements.

More and more the deep bombings are just drone swarms. With a record of over 400 lancets launched in one day last week and newer jet propelled variations using up more AA. The glidebombs doing most of the work on the front line are carried by smaller aircraft. It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response. Force Russia into a lose-lose situation where it either makes a major escalation, which they could use to try and get western boots on the ground. Or if Russia doesn't respond show the western powers that it's safe to greenlight deep strikes that slowly chip away at Russia's nuclear deterrence. As that is obviously the main reason the west won't get involved, everyone loses a nuclear war between NATO and Russia, but NATO wins a conventional war (unless China steps in).

I guess they've recognized they have no chance without European troops so they're going for crazier shit.

Pro-Russians have been shouting about the imminent nuclear war and crazy Ukrainians being on the brink of WW3 for three years now in a row every time that Ukrainians pull a successful operation of some kind (and also between the operations). Isn't it a bit tiresome when WW3 once again fails to happen?

It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response.

why you think that trying to disable weapons used to bomb Ukraine was in fact attempt to get bombed more?

It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response.

Isn’t there a more parsimonious explanation for ukraine’s behaviour? Something like: ‘Let’s do as much damage to russian military equipment as possible, because, we’re in a war, and that’s what you do’.

The russian supporters ever-renewed surprise and outrage at being attacked back never fails to entertain. Why would the ukrainians do that? They must have ulterior motives. Yesterday on twitter the hallucinated reason was to ‘torpedo the peace talks’, the peace talks that, until then, putin had shown zero interest in, and they duly decried as absurd.

Why would the ukrainians do that? They must have ulterior motives.

Indeed. What possible reason could the Ukrainians have to make the war more costly for Russia by striking against targets that Russia can't easily replace. It truly boggles the mind... /s

Assets that, if some reports are to be believed, were in some locations recently relocated and possibly preparing for an upcoming major strike that would coincide with the peace talks ongoing offensive.

Not really, you want to do damage to conventional weapons, not nuclear fleet. You're in a conventional war, you won't win with random deep strikes on weapons that aren't being used in the war. You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position. The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays. So they are eternally confused by eachother. It reminds me of the battle of the sexes.

The pro-Russians tend to outwardly go for a more "rational" style of discourse and pro-Ukrainians for more "emotional", but these are just chosen styles of discourse, they don't actually indicate that one side is more rational and the other more emotional. I still remember how the "rational" pro-Russian warbloggers and -tweeters spent weeks declaring that there's not a slightest chance the Ukrainians would get the city of H'erson back or push Russians out of the Kharkiv oblast and then dropped the whole topic like a hot potato when that happened without any indication of why they were wrong.

on weapons that aren't being used in the war

These bombers are being used in the war.

The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays.

The pro-Russian people tend to affect ruthlessness, however I'm not prepared to call this strategic thinking since it often seems to boil down to a gloss on "never do anything to upset Russia, since they might decide to nuke everyone in a fit of pique."

If you could, why would you not spend a few million to inflict hundreds of millions in damage to the enemy?

I suppose the smart, the russian-soviet way to spend money and lives, is to use AA missiles to shoot down cheap drones, or to kill one of their guys in exchange for one of Ukraine's, so that russia can brute-force its way to victory and its population to extinction. Much more sporting.

You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position.

Well yeah, your plan is ugly and weakens ukraine's position, as you note. This plan was beautiful and gave russia a black eye. Apples and Oranges.

weapons that aren't being used in the war

Russia was in fact using exactly this bombers to attack Ukraine. It is one of their methods to launch cruise missiles. It is used by Russia as Ukraine cannot target planes in flight and it gives missiles far greater range than launching them from ground.

Maybe photo is not from invasion of Ukraine, but here you have Kh-101 missiles under the wings of a Tupolev Tu-95: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tu95MSM_%22Super_Modern%22_(24912829706).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BA%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D1%85_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%82_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%81_%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%A2%D1%83-160.ogv has missile launch in Syria.

Not bothered to find official video of doing this as part of bombing Ukraine, but AFAIK noone is denying this.

The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays

Yes, invasion of Ukraine was a masterful stroke of genius strategy and was famously considered as masterfully prepared. Unlike emotional Ukrainian defense that had no strategic thought whatsoever.

In other words you generalization is just false.

And that is leaving aside fact that morale tends to be fairly important in war, so it is rational to take care of also that.

What a great advertisement for better border control. At this point, you basically have to be doing some kind of search on every single container coming in, right? But then, how do you find trustworthy un-bribe-able people at scale to inspect them all? As the story goes, if you don't think terrorists could get a nuclear bomb into the country, figure they could always hide it in a shipment of drugs.

Word on the street (who knows if true) is that the drone containers were assembled inside Russia by Ukrainian sleeper agents. There's a photo circulating claiming to depict the interior of the same warehouse in Chelyabinsk (I think) that was in the Ukrainian propaganda release depicting the assembly process.

At this point, you basically have to be doing some kind of search on every single container coming in, right?

Or alternatively just store your combat aircraft in reinforced hangars, as they all should be in the first place.

... Huh?

How does that solve the problem of drones hurled at Dodgers games or Morgan Wallen concerts? Or power substations or the George Washington bridge at rush hour? Or, hell, just in the general direction of downtown Dallas?

It doesn't solve any of that, of course.

I've heard the claim that US and Russian strategic bombers are currently required to be stored in a way accessible to satellite recon, as part of the verification sections of our arms control treaties.

Skimming through summaries of New START (and the long-expired START I, in case this was an outdated claim), though, I can't seem to find any such requirements, so it's possible this was just a misunderstanding or a fabrication. I do see requirements for allowing frequent on-site inspections, though, which you'd hope would be sufficient alone. If I missed something about bomber storage and there is some need to change the verification requirements, now would be a great time to do it - the latest extension of New START expires next February.

Edit: ... and apparently nobody cares when New START expires, because Putin suspended Russia's participation in it in 2023.

I've heard the claim that US and Russian strategic bombers are currently required to be stored in a way accessible to satellite recon, as part of the verification sections of our arms control treaties.

Yes, they need to be made visible to satellites of the other party during and after the process of being eliminated in accordance with the treaty.

Well, that would certainly be easier to square with the need to protect the remaining non-eliminated bombers.

Thanks. Do you have a citation for that?

The drones were autonomous, their machine vision trained on the museum airplanes Ukraine had. A sufficiently motivated non-state actor could pull off an attack like this on any air force base, like Whiteman, for example.

If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry. They seemed to be using cellular networks though, not ai.

If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry

China has indeed been doing that.

Fuck. Forget LLMs, if this develops further (and I see little reason why it shouldn't), there is a very real risk war and terror becomes generally commodified and ubiquitous.

From last October's AAQC: "What many posters in this forum think AI may imply in the medium to long term in terms of major upheaval and disruption, I view drones implying in the short and medium term."

I've seen videos of the boston dynamics dog walking the streets and dropping N-bombs. That's just a short hop away from strapping a gun and a raspi on that thing. Running a very rudimentary NN scanning for skin color.

Speaking of terror (since we're on every list already), power substations are great targets. Fragile, usually protected by nothing more than a chain-link fence, prone to cascading failures. You don't even need a big explosion to damage them.

This interview with a Russian drone designer is from a few weeks ago, but really interesting from a perspective of how drone warfare has been evolving on the front lines.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM

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