As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
> Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament
Some of this is going to be stalled - Romania was planning on deploying the Iron Dome [0] and Spyder [1] for AD which was going to be co-produced by Volkswagen in their German factories that were on the chopping block, but Qatar (Volkswagen's largest minority shareholder with 17% voting share) blocked that deal [2].
Iron Dome is designed for protecting from home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip. And according to research the main reason for the low casualty rate is actually the early warning. How exactly is it supposed to help with real missiles and drones?
How do these scams keep happening? Why doesn't anyone care how their taxpayer money is spent?
> home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip
Homemade bottle rockets are a 2000s era Israel thing. Now it's Ababeel, Mohajer, Shahed, Arash and other Iranian drones deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The same kinds of drones being used in Ukraine and operated by Iranian personnel [0][1][2] that are also the same make as the drones shot down in Romania as well as Poland.
For me, I just hope the country collapses and we spend the next ten years prosecuting everyone who caused this outcome and overthrowing the existing system. It’s inevitable with how brain dead leadership is throughout government and corporations. The relentless greedy morons have taken the yoke.
Yeah, something is preventing them from just putting a small autocannon onto a turret and firing it from a Python script on a laptop. Russian drones and missiles seem to be just straight flying kinds, and while there are reports of Stinger type missiles seen installed on them, there haven't been reports of them growing anti-mortar radars. Most of them shouldn't need guided munitions at all to deal with.
Yeah, obviously F-16's & humans scale very poorly for this. However:
- At one-a-day scale, political and risk considerations probably favor the expensive solution.
- Using F-16's reveals nothing about your current anti-drone defenses. (Yeah, it's also a real-world basic competence test for your air force - for better and for worse.)
- If your intel people want more data on the drones, an F-16 can haul a whole lotta intel-gathering equipment to the show.
- If you're dealing internally with some head-in-the-sand traditionalists dragging their heels on updating your doctrine/equipment/training to deal with drones, then "real world, right now" examples are probably useful.
(BTW - do the articles say "a2a missile" anywhere? F-16's typically mount a 20mm cannon, a cheap drone is not a hard target, and cannon rounds are dirt cheap by compare.)
Ukrainian F-16s have used cannons to shoot down some Russian drones. Cheaper than a missile, but a somewhat risky maneuver as it requires getting close at low altitude and possibly flying through the exploding debris.
France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).
>Since 2008 the channel has been wholly owned by the French government
Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing? Kinda shocked that people here applaud state-owned media (there is no difference between "government-owned" or "state-owned").
> What is the distinction between government and state?
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
Not the only one though: I remember what happened when we 'invaded' Lybia: not one criticism in the French news anywhere, total censorship, even though our media had widely and correctly criticised the US for the Irak war..
So I think the best thing is to get news from everywhere Russia, China, the US, Europe, but that's a lot of work..
Usually the argument is that because a reputable news agency with a history of high quality journalism made once a mistake, it's better to listen to some angry podcaster with a history inviting cooky nutcase, or sketchy Twitter account with history of boosting fake news as jokes.
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
Yes, but it also trains the pilots and everything around them for real action in a non war environment (you cannot just shoot anywhere in civilian airspace).
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
I think the idea is that you don't keep sending just one F16, but the problem is long before an age of drones we built up some catch me if you can bullshit where we expect smaller countries to ignore airspace violations.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
Also bad for the world. The lesson, as with Iran and Iraq, is: you’d better have nukes and never give them up. This is the opposite of the lesson we want if we want to contain proliferation.
The global taboo on use remains. If someone breaks that and gets away with it we are into civilization ending danger territory.
> As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
From the Guardian (12 days ago): "Kyiv’s decision to honour second world war fighters who killed about 100,000 Poles has revived simmering tensions". Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and today's Ukraine politics worships Bandera. Lots of streets are renamed to honor him. Eastern Ukrainians are considered second class - or as some politicians said: "There are 2 million people too many".
The US (look up Nuland and her quote about 'fuck the EU') fueled with $5B the nationalism in Ukraine. Now imagine, the US would fuel with $50B the nationalism in Belgium and the the flemish would attack wallonie. You know what would happen? France would support the wallonie. Nothing to see here.
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
russia's invasion of Ukraine is absolutely solvable. It's just a disgrace that Ukraine is left to do it alone, with huge casualties (civilian as well as military), and inconceivable destruction.
The logic I’ve heard is that one of the more palatable defeat conditions for Russia is that they’d rather lose to NATO than Ukraine. So they’re fine to push limits because even the worst case scenario gives them better options.
Having seen posts in social media by the usual suspects from previous such incidents, it's a way to convince the audience at home that the enemy (NATO) is actually weak and that there's no need to be alarmed.
They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.
Absolutely not the ideal weapon to fight them, and better(cheaper) options are coming to shoot down the drones, but until then the price is irrelevant as long as you're preventing loss of human life.
Saving any nonzero amount of lives for any unbounded cost is not necessarily a good trade, if there are ways to save more lives for the same cost, or the same number of lives for a lesser cost.
We're not at the point of making those kind of decisions in Romania, fortunately. Politically right now it would be very dangerous to say that "some of you may die".
> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
A non-decoy drone would presumably go no further than its target, at which point any leftover fuel just adds to the fireball. Whereas making a decoy drone go down before the fuel is exhausted is pointless waste, when instead it could be decoying a little bit longer.
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.
You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest.
If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back
NATO not going total war over a few airspace incursions does not prove a lack of resolve to defend its territories. Russia is also not salami slicing its way to anything if it's not causing meaningful damage or territorial exchange.
Conversely, Russia(n leadership) would probably love an overreaction by NATO to unlock the use of its conscripted army for "defense," which is not feasible in the current war of aggression.
The only loaded rhetoric is coming from you, I merely stated what the incentives are. Note that the situation is somewhat symmetric in that Russia also has an incentive to misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
> misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
Claims to such effect has been made in public by reputable persons but they are not very credible nor has any supporting evidence been shown in public.
Drones getting lost due to GNSS jamming is happening.
But intentional misdirection towards a target would require GNSS spoofing capabilities over an impractically large area and that the drones would be susceptible to simple spoofing. They have satellite navigation, inertial navigation, terrain following cameras and listen to ground based radio sources like cell towers and are designed to operate in hostile RF environment. Just sending a fake GPS signal (several of them) won't make the drone divert to a specific target or direction.
I'm not buying the misdirection story until more compelling evidence is made public.
To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...
Why are these drones so easy to shoot down, but the ones invading airspaces over nuclear bases and other sensitive installations hundreds of times for months all over Europe and the east coast of the US were never shot down or tracked even once?
One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.
Dozens of sensitive military bases, nuclear facilities, and airports reported incursions and some shut down their air spaces in response, are you saying the Air Force, NORTHCOM, and airport air traffic control don’t know what airplanes are? The Coast Guard and NJ state police also reported sightings and even pursued some of the drones.
Yep. Officials aren't immune to mass hysteria, and there's immense pressure to assume the worst "out of an abundance of caution."
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we [DHS, FBI, FAA, and DoD] assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast."
Either they were wrong about the nature of the sightings when they happened or they were wrong afterwards, there's no world in which they got it right the whole way through. So the only question is which way they got it wrong. I see no reason to believe that they were correct in the moment and wrong afterwards.
I guess because the have an explosive payload and it's better to take them down before they reach a populated area.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
> Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East?
Iran has a strong stance to significantly increase influence in the Middle East if not restrained: they have many way (not just Hormuz) to project power on oil countries, and essentially force them to switch sides.
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
>"Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side."
500+ million people and corresponding economy needs Ukraine to protect themselves? this is just plain pathetic or what's worse proof that the EU would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
British, American, and French deaths made up only a small fraction of the 60M-75M killed in WWII, which speaks to the global ("World") nature of a World War.
I believe it's also the case that more Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War than the UK/US/France combined during WWII as well.
No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
Hasn't it occurred to you that typically when an explosive drone reaches the end of its flight, it, er.. explodes? Or that if it isn't shot down, that the last moment of its flight might kill people?
Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.
In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
AIUI Russia has been regularly intruding into Finnish airspace and has often penetrated the land border with Georgia.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
Because Russian's war with Ukraine is unsustainable, something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
Do not bother with the youtube video.The essential ideas is that Putin could scare European Countries into surrendering Ukraine. This video legitimizes that scare tactic. Nor does it deal with the underlying issue, which is that like Hitler and Nixon, Putin believes he is infallible. As a result the world as he sees it and the world as it is will continue to diverge.
Wouldn't this make the situation much worse for Russia, and therefore for him as well? The oligarchs will know who is to blame if Putin starts a war with NATO.
The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.
>"something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO"
I think us couch experts including author of that particular video have no fucking clue what he will do and what the true state of affairs is. Had all those expert prediction materialized Russia would've already disintegrated 10 times and Putin would've lost power in a first months.
Luckily being 73 and in what appears to be poor health can’t last forever. I can’t imagine spending my twilight years being one of the most hated people on the planet, but the head of the USA and Russia seem to have no issues with that.
Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.
Why would Putin want people to think that Putin is sick or infirm, and his ability to lead might be compromised? His entire schtick is that he's a strongman leader and the only reliable option in Russia.
What? In other words, you're saying: "Russia is losing war with Ukraine, so it wants to start a second front with bigger enemy".
Also, how's Ukraine war is sustainable for Ukraine? It's economy is non-existent (almost 100% dependent on western donations), it has less than 50% of population of 2022 (they don't publish any population stats directly, but if you combine available statistics, there are about 10-15 millions left most of them old retired people or young people that are too young to send them to the front lines), they are losing territory every day.
This is some weird "Ukraine is winning but front is moving in the wrong direction" logic.
A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.
I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.
Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
It has turned out to be luck in disguise when Trump stopped weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Because Biden, Trump, and the Germans set all kinds of limitations so as not to strike Russia. For the first three years, Ukrainians were defending with one arm tied behind their back.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
> These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Some, yes. Many are merely defective units. These weapons are being manufactured in enormous quantity and deployed rapidly with minimal quality control: based on the reported numbers over Ukraine, the net manufacturing rate is about 10 per hour. Inevitably, some are defective and fail to follow waypoints. Romania is on a line through numerous targets in Ukraine from the Kursk region where many Russian drone flights begin, so Romania ends up being the unintended destination.
The good news is that the defects likely represent resource problems for the manufacturers. The same phenomena has been noted with increasing failed missile launches from Russia.
There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine.
As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
You are mixing legitimate sources reporting the intelligence suggesting Russia is seeking a provocation in Poland with a Kremlin propganda channel lying about Polish commandos operating in Ukraine.
“Dear Mr Putin, Please don’t use our airspace to attack Ukraine else we will be forced to write you another slightly more strongly worded letter next time. Thanks, NATO”
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title. It has very evidently both relevance to intellectual curiosity and a potential of impact on our activities.
It's all a sham so that we, Romania, would be dragged into this war. That will only mean the end of the comprador regime currently ruling over us, but until then most probably many of us, Romanian men, will get killed "defending" the Western regime. Such is life, i.e. requiring sacrifices.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
[1] https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/news-watch/news/2026/06...
Some of this is going to be stalled - Romania was planning on deploying the Iron Dome [0] and Spyder [1] for AD which was going to be co-produced by Volkswagen in their German factories that were on the chopping block, but Qatar (Volkswagen's largest minority shareholder with 17% voting share) blocked that deal [2].
[0] - https://www.jpost.com/international/article-861770
[1] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sy1n3pcfzx
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/qatar-blo...
How do these scams keep happening? Why doesn't anyone care how their taxpayer money is spent?
Homemade bottle rockets are a 2000s era Israel thing. Now it's Ababeel, Mohajer, Shahed, Arash and other Iranian drones deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The same kinds of drones being used in Ukraine and operated by Iranian personnel [0][1][2] that are also the same make as the drones shot down in Romania as well as Poland.
Ukraine also gave us intel linking Iranian strike capacity with Russia [3]. [0] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/03/10/8024839/
[1] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/07/7375314/
[2] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/10/23/7373119/
[3] - https://xcancel.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2081074329115078813#m
Just think the small Cessnas and pipers littered around that could be used for a similar task.
https://youtu.be/GrzzYTXgnMQ?is=zChAgYfc5ZEi25gt
Edited out bad grammer
Unfortunately it's been long discontinued and it's successor Skyranger is still facing some technical difficulties as of recent reports.
- At one-a-day scale, political and risk considerations probably favor the expensive solution.
- Using F-16's reveals nothing about your current anti-drone defenses. (Yeah, it's also a real-world basic competence test for your air force - for better and for worse.)
- If your intel people want more data on the drones, an F-16 can haul a whole lotta intel-gathering equipment to the show.
- If you're dealing internally with some head-in-the-sand traditionalists dragging their heels on updating your doctrine/equipment/training to deal with drones, then "real world, right now" examples are probably useful.
(BTW - do the articles say "a2a missile" anywhere? F-16's typically mount a 20mm cannon, a cheap drone is not a hard target, and cannon rounds are dirt cheap by compare.)
https://www.zona-militar.com/en/2026/02/09/ukrainian-f-16am-...
Though most French commercial media are not bad, either.
In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing? Kinda shocked that people here applaud state-owned media (there is no difference between "government-owned" or "state-owned").
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just observing the language.
As for your question, Russia is nominally a democracy but I wouldn't trust the veracity of their state media reports.
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
In a more specific Canadian example: The government funding that comes to the CBC each year is actually from what would we would call the state. https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin...
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
Because democracy is effectively mob rule, which means minority voices may get shut out.
Which means that everything leads to the status quo, and the majority voices get shut out in favor of the most entrenched minority.
Those clever founders.
France is executive heavy democracy similar to US and Latin American States. This is a very big flaw and state owned media might be contribute to.
So I think the best thing is to get news from everywhere Russia, China, the US, Europe, but that's a lot of work..
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
No
Logic
Whatsoever
Russia's pretexts were largely true.
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
2) Poland is not your concern, Vasily
Also bad for the world. The lesson, as with Iran and Iraq, is: you’d better have nukes and never give them up. This is the opposite of the lesson we want if we want to contain proliferation.
The global taboo on use remains. If someone breaks that and gets away with it we are into civilization ending danger territory.
From the Guardian (12 days ago): "Kyiv’s decision to honour second world war fighters who killed about 100,000 Poles has revived simmering tensions". Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and today's Ukraine politics worships Bandera. Lots of streets are renamed to honor him. Eastern Ukrainians are considered second class - or as some politicians said: "There are 2 million people too many".
The US (look up Nuland and her quote about 'fuck the EU') fueled with $5B the nationalism in Ukraine. Now imagine, the US would fuel with $50B the nationalism in Belgium and the the flemish would attack wallonie. You know what would happen? France would support the wallonie. Nothing to see here.
Based PM, from one of your neighbors just North of the Danube.
Not World War 3 though, currently.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/ukraine-war-br...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypr5985ejo
Iran is even more closely linked. Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.
Plus Russia's various Toadies (which included Hungary, an EU nation, until recently)... It's a pretty sizeable bloc.
It's not yet an all out Axis and Allies situation, but it's definitely not just Russia against the world.
How nice of Trump and Netanyahu, thinking about the world peace and Europe's well-being.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
For the case of a hot war, knowing the detection and destruction capabilities of your future enemy is valuable.
I don't know if it's to try and circumvent Ukrainian defenses or to provoke a reaction to sell to domestic audiences though.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes
Escalating tensions between Russia and NATO is in Ukraine's, not Russia's, interest.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
Conversely, Russia(n leadership) would probably love an overreaction by NATO to unlock the use of its conscripted army for "defense," which is not feasible in the current war of aggression.
Claims to such effect has been made in public by reputable persons but they are not very credible nor has any supporting evidence been shown in public.
Drones getting lost due to GNSS jamming is happening.
But intentional misdirection towards a target would require GNSS spoofing capabilities over an impractically large area and that the drones would be susceptible to simple spoofing. They have satellite navigation, inertial navigation, terrain following cameras and listen to ground based radio sources like cell towers and are designed to operate in hostile RF environment. Just sending a fake GPS signal (several of them) won't make the drone divert to a specific target or direction.
I'm not buying the misdirection story until more compelling evidence is made public.
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we [DHS, FBI, FAA, and DoD] assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast."
Either they were wrong about the nature of the sightings when they happened or they were wrong afterwards, there's no world in which they got it right the whole way through. So the only question is which way they got it wrong. I see no reason to believe that they were correct in the moment and wrong afterwards.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
Iran has a strong stance to significantly increase influence in the Middle East if not restrained: they have many way (not just Hormuz) to project power on oil countries, and essentially force them to switch sides.
Those zany kids!
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Seen the news of the past hours about the 2028 intention?
If our leaders act like Nazis, we need to kill some Nazis. I would rather risk being called a terrorist than be part of that kind of bullshit.
500+ million people and corresponding economy needs Ukraine to protect themselves? this is just plain pathetic or what's worse proof that the EU would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
Even a victorious war is destructive. I'd like to do without, but I am just a random hobbit in this regard.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
I believe it's also the case that more Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War than the UK/US/France combined during WWII as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
And just on first principles, how stupid would the Ukrainian have to be to do such a thing to their biggest ally? It almost beggars belief.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Портянки
From the france24 article:
> A government investigation reportedly identified the first of the three drones as a Shahed model used by Russia in its war with Ukraine.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhYFSGkaAc
Wouldn't this make the situation much worse for Russia, and therefore for him as well? The oligarchs will know who is to blame if Putin starts a war with NATO.
I think us couch experts including author of that particular video have no fucking clue what he will do and what the true state of affairs is. Had all those expert prediction materialized Russia would've already disintegrated 10 times and Putin would've lost power in a first months.
“Father Time is undefeated.” - LeBron James
Also, how's Ukraine war is sustainable for Ukraine? It's economy is non-existent (almost 100% dependent on western donations), it has less than 50% of population of 2022 (they don't publish any population stats directly, but if you combine available statistics, there are about 10-15 millions left most of them old retired people or young people that are too young to send them to the front lines), they are losing territory every day.
This is some weird "Ukraine is winning but front is moving in the wrong direction" logic.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/26/8045972/
There could be a total collapse in Eastern Europe, but the total collapse will be in Moscow due to an unsustainable war.
Why make it more difficult if the current situation is unsustainable? Does not make sense.
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
He very much passes the smell test :)
These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Rumor is Polish GROM have been inside Russia for months.
Edit: See sources in my comment below. I bring receipts.
Some, yes. Many are merely defective units. These weapons are being manufactured in enormous quantity and deployed rapidly with minimal quality control: based on the reported numbers over Ukraine, the net manufacturing rate is about 10 per hour. Inevitably, some are defective and fail to follow waypoints. Romania is on a line through numerous targets in Ukraine from the Kursk region where many Russian drone flights begin, so Romania ends up being the unintended destination.
The good news is that the defects likely represent resource problems for the manufacturers. The same phenomena has been noted with increasing failed missile launches from Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RBY1cY-GF8
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
Basically GROM getting "leave" and then ending up with their whole team inside Ukraine as "contractors", just with deniability.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/polish-mercenaries...
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/03/russia-pla...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/12/8043770/
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/baltics-poland-w...
Edit:
Added: https://youtu.be/5RBY1cY-GF8?is=rVFFKVnBxkmsF9aM
Pic: https://x.com/intermarium24/status/1659954927299440641
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/military-watch-magazine-bias/
You know, I used to have this style view when reading and commenting Slashdot, pre-9/11 about anything other than "the tech".
Afterward, in high school, I began to feel that understanding the foundations of geopolitics can help you maintain an advantage in the business world.
Seems ths qualifies in spades.