Station keeping at that altitude is tricky. Wind is really strong up there, but fortunately there are no clouds - seasons accounted for, every day gives the same amount of solar power. And it’s really cold.

Regardless, going there is economically really attractive, compared to throwing a satellite into orbit.

It matches a pattern.

Acting upon advance warnings about a possible attempt or provocation by Russia, Finland has asked Sweden if they could station some ships and aircraft on Finnish territory just in case.

What we’re doing here in Estonia currently (besides already hosting extra troops from allied countries) officially, seems to be “our threat assessement has not changed”. Unofficially, the defense forces accepted almost 3 x times less conscripts (only the brightest crayons, and mostly into UAV / anti-air / artillery / missile roles) and all the paid personnel are taking refresher courses on modern methods of war. Meanwhile construction works in the border regions are underway, with anti-armor ditches being dug and dragon’s teeth stored near blockable places. Drone purchases are of course behind schedule.

Basically everyone in Eastern Europe considers it a possibility that Putin might make another miscalculation.

Putin should know that a miscalculation with NATO will absolutely guarantee that Ukraine gets the upper hand.

At the moment, there is no realistic way to do it.

Large gatherings of people may become a target.

Also, I should note that while they currently depend on Western-branded components made in Taiwan (to get lots of processing power), the same can be done (if you find a good enough coder) with far less operations per second… in which case they have supply from the PRC. Fortunately this hasn’t happened yet.

“Monochrome” seems somewhat of a hybrid between a cruise missile and a killer robot. It’s a cruise missile which evaluates things it sees, and decides which target is worth attacking. What instructions it gets before launch, hasn’t been disclosed so far, but everything suggests those are fairly abstract instructions.

I hope they get those interceptors.

But more than that, I hope they get the tools to shut down the production of Iskander-M launchers or 9M723 missiles.

Missile defense is necessary (to preserve very important objects), but financially unsound. Destroying the opponent’s missile supply is financially sound.

I hope Russia doesn’t make and store them underground like Iran. Which anyone with sense would do, unfortunately.

If it does and production cannot be stopped, the next best thing is to hit back with similar tools.

I hope you’re right.

They have ‘elections’ coming in September, so if this kind of events make people discuss the war, and maybe doubt the official story of how utterly necessary it is, or how utterly well it’s going for them… maybe. But I would not bet on that outcome.

My take:

• yes, Wildberries did sell and store drone components, single mode bare fiber and such stuff, but not on a world-changing scale, they most likely supplied smallish drone makers, not big ones

• legally, this makes them a target, but actual damage from a burning Wildberries warehouse to Russian warfighting capability is small

• meanwhile the presence of civilian employees and a great amount of totally unrelated goods discourages attacking them, and strongly advises to plan any attacks in a way to minimize loss of life

• anyway, Ukraine has finally decided to attack them, property damage is likely quite big, not sure about loss of life

• this will cause Russian air defense a great deal of trouble, since they have to reshuffle their defenses (they are already over-extended)

• but, this does not remove Russia’s sources of income, just genrally f**ks with their economy and causes dissatisfafaction and uncertainty

So overall, I’m not cheering, but I’m not condemning it either.

It’s roughly equivalent to Russia bombing UkrPochta (they’ve done it) with the justification that its warehouses contain Chinese drone parts arriving into Ukraine. Reading directly, not a super bright move - militarily, a target of very low relevance. It could give an advantage through secondary effects.

Personal impression:

Everyone knew there was a problem with Oleksandr Syrskyi for a while. How had a tendency to micromanage troops, often causing needless losses by commanding an attack by some unit which was exhausted enough so it could only defend. Maybe a Russian position was taken for a while, but the unit was super exhausted and Russians took it back. This seems to have earned him the nickname “Butcher”.

It also seems that Syrskyi liked to build a hierarchy of command based on personal loyalty, and didn’t like people bringing him bad news or criticism.

Due to his high rank, however, he was immune to criticism from low-ranking people. It took a big dispute with the former defense minister (Myhkailo Fedorov) to bring attention to the problem. This exposed the issue because Fedorov liked to govern by the numbers, and is capable of providing detailed explanations for his actions. He had a reputation of not doing things for personal or whimsical reasons.

A point came when the MoD of Ukraine and the chief of the army could not meet at the same table. When the government resigned, the defense minister was free to explain what he thought about things. So finally there is enough momentum to dislodge Syrskyi, and I think it does them good.

Actually, not really.

The foremost need of Ukraine, currently, is financial backing, a steady stream of equipment and safe places to manufacture equipment. They haven’t asked for foreign soldiers to do their fighting. In fact, they are increasingly switching over to remote-operated warfare to reduce needs for manpower.

What Ukraine urgently needs at the moment is either some kind of defense against Russian ballistic missiles (since Trump wasted US missile defense on fighting with Iran and can’t sell to Ukraine even if he wanted, not to speak of donating)… or a way to knock out production of at least “Iskander” (9K720, also known as SS-26 Stone).

I my humble opinion, knocking out production would be smarter. This translates into other countries giving money, elements of tech and research so that Ukraine can piece together a very effective long-range strike program and hammer Russian factories until Iskander becomes a rarity item.

Which is probably happening as we speak, but sadly at the same time, Russia in hitting Ukraininan facilities with ballistic missiles almost unobstructed because missile defense is very, very exhausted. Fortunately many of those facilities are either deep underground or in secret locations but power stations and fuel storage sites aren’t exactly a secret.

Also, both sides are currently deploying AI-enabled drones, with Ukraine a bit ahead in reach (and a bit smarter with keeping a human in the loop) and Russia a bit ahead on autonomy (their latest don’t have a human in the loop, but don’t fly as far).

I would characterize: in this stage of the conflict, Russia has lost initiative and Ukraine has gained it, but both sides are destroying each other’s infrastructure at an uneasy pace. It would be good if peace could be achieved before winter, because a winter with broken infrastructure is a disaster waiting to happen.

This latest government overhaul (Yulia Svyrdenko resigning as PM, as a result Mykhailo Fedorov also becoming jobless) has left me wondering.

I haven’t yet seen a clear reason for it. I have the feeling, purely based on results - if these are results attributable to his activity as a minister of defense - that he should be offered the same job again.

I’m not sure what to think about it - a risk certainly exists, but I can’t put a probability on it currently.

I live in one of the countries which has been warned about a provocation - Estonia. Over here, we’ve been preparing for this at some kind of a pace (IMHO too slow) for quite some years. An admission must be made: both Ukraine and Russia are way ahead in mass production and use of drones. They both punch above their weight with drones (and both have considerable weight too) and have considerably more antidrone defense set up than neighbouring countries.

Russia manufactures an awful lots of drones per day. But as long as Ukraine fights it with an equally awful lot, Russia simply lacks resources for a big provocation, since Ukraine is tying down all their resources.

Russia has fuel shortages, manpower shortages, armor and artillery shortages, no surplus of drones either (they fly to Ukraine within days of leaving a factory). There could be a stockpile of 100 or 200 Iskander short range ballistic missiles, less of other types. On the background, of course, the Soviet-built strategic missile forces exist untouched. But they’re not capable of being used with conventional warheads, since their precision is too low.

Meanwhile, Putin’s popularity is finally dropping. Parliamentary elections are approaching. It’s fairly obviouls that special services must be considering “creative” ways of taking back initiative. But I can’t clearly see what they would hope to achieve with this kind of activity.

Hypothetic perspective from Russia: “let’s f*ck around and see if NATO has resolve”

• Option A: NATO does not have resolve, but Ukraine used the day to blow up another series of important industries
• Option B: oopsie, NATO does have resolve and just joined Ukraine in blowing up stuff

I don’t see a winning option.

There have been suggestions and warnings that in autumn, after faking parliamentary elections, there might be a mobilization in Russia.

(Hopefully, a revolution soon after that, since a mobilization means giving proper weapons to random blokes and sending them to a war which they didn’t intend to join.)

Fortunately young people are the least enthusiastic. He can keep looking and only find a limited amount of fools.

I guess it fizzled out or wasn’t pointing at Earth. Geomagnetic storms range from G1 to G5, and currently a G1 storm is predicted.

https://geomag.bgs.ac.uk/data_service/space_weather/3dforecast.html

Solar wind speed remains elevated at around 650 km/s due to continuing coronal hole (CH) effects. We are due to transition into another high-speed stream (HSS) from a trans-equatorial CH during the first forecast interval, enhancing geomagnetic activity further potentially up to STORM G1 level.

Aurora maps show pretty weak auroras around the north pole. Most indicators are green or yellow.

https://aurorainfo.eu/aurora-alerts/

Unfortunately, yes.

The commander of the unmanned forces apologized for inconvenience in an online post, but still, one is not supposed to attack the power grid without a good military reason (e.g. causing temporary distraction in an easy to repair way, disconnecting a particular military object or production facility).

I don’t know the details. Typically, if one flies into a transformer, that is temporary disablement. For comparison, if one flies into a turbine hall, that shows that one intends to take the grid down and keep it down.

However, I would not worry much, since Crimea is home to a lot of Ukrainians. They won’t break the infrastructure badly because their own citizens need it.

Zelensky meanwhile says that he has signed the orders to conduct a 40 day “influence campaign” to influence Russia to negotiate for peace. Speculating a bit, causing severe shortages, an outflow of people and the failure of this tourism season in Crimea (the least defensible part of occupied lands, since it has such a feeble connection to Russia) could be part of this.

The earthquake had a high magnitude, happened close to the country’s capital (a densely enough populated area), and there are videos indicating that multiple buildings collapsed entirely.

Also, the main quake occurred only 39 seconds after the first (slightly weaker) quake, which is not enough time for people to evacuate a multi-storey building.

I hope everyone in the region helps them with their rescue capabilities, because they’re going to need help.

As always with earthquakes, initial data about the number of casualties will understate the damage. Modeling by the US Geological Survey suggests there will be thousands of casualties (10 000 … 100 000).

The earthquake had a high magnitude, happened close to the country’s capital (a densely enough populated area), and there are videos indicating that multiple buildings collapsed entirely.

Also, the main quake occurred only 39 seconds after the first (slightly weaker) quake, which is not enough time for people to evacuate a multi-storey building.

I hope everyone in the region helps them with their rescue capabilities, because they’re going to need help.

A note: they did it in winter.

Now the people involved have managed to leave Russia and they can talk.

This was a interesting read. I didn’t even know that electrocaloric materials existed. :)

Having read the explanation of how it works, I think the biggest difficulty waiting for them on the curve is achieving considerable levels of power.

But they seem to firmly believe that they can get past an instrument cooler to a residential heat pump.

An idea: Israel should protest the indignity of being softly described as a less offensive version of itself. :)

Protest ideas: Israel should suspend their accession treaty with the EU and start an economic boycott of the EU. ;)