Not to mention, they definitely offed a whistleblower. The guy specifically told his family and friends that he was not suicidal, and had no intent whatsoever to take his own life… and then is found dead after missing a testimony date.

Or even just the tip, just to see how it feels

Maybe, maybe not.

What’s way weirder is that he’s got zero flaps and gear is still down, which is the exact opposite of what you want to do when climbing out. Maybe pilot error (control inversion)?

A surprise to be sure, but an unwelcome one

…huh.

Simple as

Person thought it was a typo of POCs (people of color)

You gotta figure out a way to ride the line just short of getting banned.

Lmao dude what the fuck would you propose be used against a quarter million kamikaze UAVs?

And more importantly: the defenders need to get lucky every single time. The attackers only need to get lucky once.

How many Standard + SEARAM + ESSM + CIWS rounds do you think a single base and two surface flotillas could expend in a sustained saturation attack like that? Not how many in the magazines - how many can be effectively expended over a given span of time. Also, take into the account that a part of this strategy typically includes salting the mix with much more modern and capable and fast ASMs/AGMs.

Saturation attacks are the strategy the Soviet (and now Russian) Navy centers their doctrine upon for a reason. And that reason is the USN CVBG. Cheap, numerous drones make that strategy a lot more effective.

You are grossly underestimating the difficulty of dealing with a saturation attack, much less a sustained one. That sort of attack would likely almost certainly overwhelm the defensive resources of Guam with a couple CVBGs parked offshore.

…you should look into what this shit is doing to Ukraine. They’re quite difficult and tedious to intercept, and they are cheap enough that it’s not that hard to launch saturation attacks.

Put another way: if NK just converts a bunch of factories and cranks out, like, a quarter million of them over a few years (they’re very simple - I don’t think that’s an insane proposition, seriously), that becomes an existential conventional strike capability, especially if you factor in their artillery assets too. They could ruin every single military and industrial zone in SK in a single strike if they built up a stockpile like that. Seriously, hundreds to thousands of small weaponized UAVs per target where the target list is in the hundreds is not something that modern day IADS could hack - much less economically. The only systems that are going to be able to effectively deal with massed and sustained attacks like that are directed energy weapons, which are only now being rolled out operationally in relatively small numbers, and I’m not sure SK has a system like that ready for deployment.

It’s not about how much SK can produce.

It’s about the fact that SK is now going to have to create a whole new IADS layer to defend against these cheap tactical kamikaze drones / prop-driven cruise missiles.

South Korea is going to be (justifiably) Big Mad about that

Lmfao they’re slipping. It’s really telling. Putin is losing control. His conventional forces must be in pretty dire straits.

Maybe losing another meaningful fraction of his nuclear forces will help him feel better.

Honestly, no it couldn’t. That’s not a credible threat. And it’s not just about materiel losses. They sent most of their trainers to the front lines a few years ago. You… just don’t do that. It makes it impossible to regenerate your forces.

It’s weird; it really is like they’re taking the “melodramatic Galadriel” approach to geopolitics - that is to say, “ALL SHALL LOVE ME, AND DESPAIR”

It would be really hilarious if it turns out that they’re like “yeah sorry it’s just uninteresting rocks and terrestrial strata”