1941

Ukraine would have gone down with nary a whimper. I have no doubt Trump would have abandoned them.

1942

No answer from y’all…hmmm.

1943

As fun as theoretical guesses about alternate realities can be, not really the situation right now. All of a sudden there isn’t a lot of news about the current situation on the ground.

1944

In the scenario you posed, “right now” includes the prelude to the invasion. If Trump was President now, he would have been President then, and there is a good chance that there may have not been an invasion to respond to.

1945

Seems strange that the question won’t be answered. Almost as if we know what the answer would be.

1946

What part of the answer did you not understand?

1947

It has been twice, problem is, the answers don’t fit into your preconceived reality so you ignore them.

Your failure is you assume the invasion would have happened under Trump as well. You refuse to acknowledge that it may not have

1948

it wouldn’t be needed by now.

if however it was, they’d have gotten the jets, tanks, missiles a long time ago.

oh, and europe would be doing more… much more. lng sales and production would be through the roof and we wouldn’t be begging the saudis for oil. in all likely hood instead of the resurgence of a palestine centric fp and its attendant terrorism the abraham accords would have been expanded. and iran would not only be in a state of upheaval, but on their knees. nk would not be firing missiles over japan and china would not be threatening taiwan. add to that a secure southern border instead of a couple million new tresspassers and additionally democrats would be howling about 4% inflation.

oh, and either carlos munoz or barbara lagoa would be on the scotus

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1949

maybe you should worry about brandon?

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1950

What will Biden’s reaction be to Japan’s apparent exit from the US-backed sanctions war?

Will Biden try a repeat of Bush senior?

Or will Biden announce that one way or another the US will end the Sakhalin 1 project?

1951

That sucks.

1952

Some interesting developments taking shape. The infrastructure strikes are starting to be felt in Ukraine. Rolling intentional blackouts are now in effect across the nation due to the continued strikes on the power grid. 80% of Kiev is without running water. The combat lines appear to have stablized. And Ukraine has displayed the ability to launch long range naval drone attacks.

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1953

many of the drone and missile attacks originate in crimea. this is precisely why we should have given atacms a long time ago.

1954

These naval drones are unique. The guidance systems appear to indicate line of sight with the controlling data link. Warships have significant ELINT detection capabilities. Both as early warning and as target detection. The drones had a 2 way data link. They were transmitting imagery from their camera array while receiving guidance corrections. That link will be an omni-directional transmission on the drone side, and possibly on the relay side. The MI question right now should be what platform is the relay link between the naval drones and their controller? We would use a SATCOM link. Ukraine doesn’t have their own dedicated SATCOM system. A Ukrainian airborne platform data link, that close to Crimea, would draw Russian fighters.

1955

they had starlink and optics. i don’t believe LOS is needed. unless you mean los from the optics and not the controller

1956

Best line of sight is with an orbital link.

1957

what i’ve seen shows starlink was used to control them. if you have starlink on one (or a few), the rest only need to follow

1958

The drones were able to transmit real time imagery, which was used for terminal attack guidance. That means each had the transmission/reception capability. The control package is not an off the shelf item. I also suspect Ukraine wasn’t spending a lot of money, it didn’t have, on advanced naval drones, This has the feel of an opportunity to field test someone else’s offensive naval drone tech.

1959

Be careful, any suggestion that a NATO country was responsible for drone attack is Russin propaganda.

1960

You just make the system available to Ukrainian forces and teach them how to operate it. No different than giving them a HIMARS or any other system. Then you observe how it performs under actual combat conditions.