My schadenfreude is severely mitigated by the fact that it is my genuine belief many of these rural areas in the US are collapsing and destroying the lives of everybody there, including all the people who DIDN’T want this.

I mean yeah fuck em, but also it doesn’t really do it for me to say that, I’m just sad.

The limit to disappointment does not exist.

No, blame the ideology of people who cannot see any future other than one they magically promise that also in the meantim dehumanizes people.

Forgiveness may be harder to come by.

I mean it definitely will, at the very least because forgiveness can only truly come after the US admits how fucked up it is, and if the ruling class of the US genuinely did that I think it would put Canadians into a state of shock where they wouldn’t be able to access longterm emotions like that.

Canadians would just be trying to compute US society not choosing bigotry over admitting being wrong and making material amends and for a time I imagine it will be very disorienting for Canadians.

Can you truly feel forgiveness when you are overcome with vertigo induced by the entity you are trying to forgive?

Ah is what you are suggesting that the russian influencer influenced in the wrong way too much by accident?

An Icarus type situation?

I mean judging from the fact that the promo footage features it driving around with the tank commander standing clear out of the hatch when almost by definition any context these will be deployed in will be under constant drone threat makes me think that is indeed the fate most of these are destined for.

This is a most honest version of this vehicle but in wheeled type. Notice driving this comfortably with a good view doesn’t require you to stick your whole body up like a prarie dog waiting to get smoked by a hawk/drone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9

Call me an armored vehicle fan but I would take being able to produce Boxer armored vehicles and just flipping the automotive market into cheap electric vehicles over sustaining a massive ICE car production capacity.

I guess my point is that part of the beauty of Electric Cars is that they commodify Automotive Production as a capacity because their drivetrains are an order of magnitude simpler, easier to produce and easier to maintain. Building cars with ICE engines is so much harder, it is like trying to build a space rocket with only analog and mechanical components. You can do it, we got really good at it, but once digital systems of control become possible the contrast was obvious. It is the same thing with Electric Cars compared to Gas Engine Cars.

I can explain an electric motor to you, what you do is get some magnets and then stick a coil of wire inside the magnets on a spinny thing and then set the wires up so they pass a current that switches back and forth thus projecting a magnetic field that is always “repelling” from the magnets and thus the electrical energy is converted into mechanical spinning continously. There I did it, there is no way I can explain how a gas engine car actually transfers power to its wheels as simply.

What is important with Electric Cars is a strong regulatory environment for testing highly digitized cars to make sure they aren’t bugged, prone to dangerous failure or pose a geopolitical threat in terms of surveillance to the country.

shrugs

…but I hate cars so take that as you will.

Capacity to produce heavy industrial vehicles like this can also be laterally extended into heavy peacetime machinery too, obviously it requires different production lines but there is a lot of skills transfer and knowledge/physical capacity that isn’t easy to produce out of thin air that is shared between military and civil contexts here.

Just ask the Archer about it.

Note while this is not a dedicated air defense platform the Spike missile and 30mm cannon (with airburst ammunition) can be used as decisive defense against a mass drone attack… which I am not saying is likely to happen to Australia but there is definitely a rational argument to be made here.

While the weapons are big on this thing, ultimately its primary role is still to transport human beings through a dangerous space full of drones and other threats safely to do something which doesn’t have to be killing. In fact in Ukraine most of the time these types of vehicles are used to rescue wounded, facilitate planned tactical retreat of troops under heavy fire, and force open the capacity to rotate friendly troops at intense flashpoints of conflict when other less armored forms of rotating infantry would be suicidal.

In peacetime though a single vehicle like this could be deployed to a port, or a sensitive area and ensure that somebody with a lot of drones and explosives couldn’t as easily and decisively threaten tragedy.

I don’t know, far be it for me to say the military industrial complex isn’t a massive problem, I live in the US lol, but also I consider Australia a fairly stable open society and I think that from an international perspective at least I am happy Australia knows how to produce a modern armored fighting vehicle like this.

The seduction of how cool military weapons look and the undeniable power they bestow is real though, I mean it is basically the moral of The Wind Rises right?

Between this and Australia acquiring a large amount of Apaches, I think Australians can genuinely feel confident their country has taken the threat of counter drone operations and littoral security with regards to small unmanned vehicles seriously. Most nations in the world have not positioned themselves as wisely as Australia has, even some that are actively engaged in war as we speak…

If only helicopter parents understood the basics of the double slit experiment!

I love it

The idea that shaheds are “cheaper” than air defenses including small missiles is an illusion, they are not and the UK almost more than any other country outside of Ukraine has proven that thoroughly.

That or Greta Thunberg if Jesus was leaning more on the “Take No Shit From Power” vibes.

Yeah but I mean if it gets people to click, why not just blame it on the AI headline optimization tool you used?

sigh

Can we start putting this on billboards please?

Ms Rachel could be Jesus honestly, I don’t mean that as a religious fanatic, she just acts a lot like I would imagine Jesus acted based on how people always talk at me about him.

Fuck McKinsey and never ever let Mayo Pete near presidential power.

I agree but it looks most like a future reef to me.

To be honest immediately not much, Trump is a russian asset so…

Medium term though, Ukraine is a popular cause in the US, Trump and his cronies are always desperately trying to distract from that and throw a wrench in the mechanisms of the US trying to help Ukraine but they cannot as hard as they try make the majority of people in the US not find common cause with Ukraine, even when Trump hangs a picture of him and Putin in the whitehouse.

The more Zelensky openly helps the US the more it destabilizes Trump/Republican attempts to sabotage Ukraine and makes Trump look like an unpopular weak fraud of a leader.

It is classic “kill them with kindness”.

Honestly they gave it a good go, it is the thought that matters with Air Defense.

Ok but what if you make the boat out of a series of isolated cages and stack them all together like a big floating row of lobster traps? Surely that will be impenetrable.