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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6152 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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The Czech instructor, a veteran of peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Yakub (name changed), was most interested in drones. Together with him, "Eighteen" decided to conduct training: Czech paratroopers were supposed to storm the positions of the Ukrainian military. The "maviks" were supposed to help them defend themselves.

"After their first assaults, Yakub approached me, says: "Do you hear, can we remove the "maviks"?" – says the major.

In the photo, a military man in camouflage controls a drone in the field. He stands on a path amidst dry grass, holding a control panel, and a small reconnaissance drone hovered in the air in front of him. Around — autumn nature: trees with yellow and green leaves, gray-blue sky with clouds.

"Why, Yakub?" – he asked in response.

"But you just draw us very quickly with your maviks, and we cannot approach you, you find us on the approach to your positions", answered the Czech instructor.

"I say, Yakub, unfortunately, we are preparing for war".

Crude translation but this is pretty brutal. I swear I've been reading articles like this for the last year where the NATO trainers go 'drive around the minefield lol' or similar. Nothing seems to be learnt, it's very slow going. Later in the article they say 'oh the Ukrainian command never said anything was wrong with our training, we totally include drones' but it's always the military officials talking, not the soldiers journos are speaking to on the ground. It is warming me to the '140 million population Russia poses a threat to 600 million population Europe' idea we see so much.

Inertia is definitely proportional to the size of the bureaucracy. Be glad that NATO hasn’t discovered Agile methodology.

On the other hand, the Russian MIC hasn’t covered itself in glory. They’ve got a significant head start. I would expect that to disappear within a few months of an open (non-nuclear!) conflict with Europe, if only because of massive casualties leading to rapid NATO turnover.

Be glad that NATO hasn’t discovered Agile methodology.

If I was NATO enemy I would pray for them to discover Agile. They would defeat themselves before reaching the battlefield.

So far the whole Agile/Scrum and similar silver bullets industrial complex is roughly split into 3 parts - grifters, useful idiots and just idiots. Sorry - there is tiny sliver of people that work in small companies and teams - but there agile comes naturally.

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