A tech company CEO that has some ethics issues.

The guy who built it should not be running it because it is too important?

"heavily pro-Russian bias"

That's a very friendly term. I would use aiding and abetting a common enemy instead. And make no mistake: russia never stopped being an enemy of the USA, they just switched their tactics. Trump is probably the best ROI of any investment ever.

Yes, putting mesh radios on drones. As a sibling commenter said, Russia already does that: they do not really have access to starlink anymore (they still use it on drones sometimes, but there is a registration scheme in Ukraine that really curbed their use).

Both sides have used drone-mounted signal repeaters for FPV drones. FPVs use cheap radios, and signal extending drones can be reusable and carry a more expensive and jamming-resistant radio.

Since it is rarely a single drone attacking, but more often an entire swarm (to saturate air defences), having a mesh radio between drones can be useful, reduce the requirement that every drone must be equipped for long range communication, and enhance the connectivity back home.

Of course, both sides are mostly supplied by the same Chinese factories when it comes to radios, so China also gets to develop their drone warfare know-how. I assume that Ukraine also uses mesh radios, but probably to a lower extent than Russia does, as they can rely on Starlink.

To address your last point, I would also assume that it is possible to air drop signal repeaters from the swarm, especially for one-way trips, they do not need to last more than a few hours. Range will be degraded on the ground though.

Obviously, I would assume that most strike drones are fully autonomous, but having a connection back home means it is easier to adjust plans (air defense location, for instance) and provide intelligence (if target was hit, etc).

I am also wondering if the recently discovered SDR APIs in Wi-Fi chipsets will be leveraged for warfare. If I had to bet, I'd say: yes, pretty soon. These are a good fit for mesh radio, jam-resistant frequency hopping and wideband transmissions.

The drones themselves build a mesh network during an attack. Russia does this as well.

I would also guess it is not that hard to setup a base station? With Operation Spiderweb they were able to start the drones from enemy territory...

Allegedly Ukraine was using UK and their extensive network of satelites to target russia. So starlink withdrawal is not a real problem.

It could also be the refinery hits, but it really makes no difference...

Slightly disturbing that the way to determine if attacks on Russia are properly on the mark for pain is to watch US backlash.

internet comments dont vote, they need to appeal to the latent desires of actual voters

So you're effectively saying we're fucked. Ok. But it makes sense.

For the beggar in the street, the rich man making a dash from his limo to his bank has always been their best hope.

Maybe for the MAGA crowd. The rest of the world does not believe what they are told to believe. There are millions of documents and dozens of witnesses that could corroborate the videos, if only they were actually be investigated.

Then maybe they should pressure russia to back out of their senseless war.

Trump doesn't want to look unpopular and he will give anything to avoid that, including letting innocent people die. It's as simple and as disgusting as that.

He started a war with Iran to look big and tough for his cult. That failed spectacularly and now he'll sacrifice anything and anyone to avoid the consequences of his actions.

Yeah, in 2028!

I'm with you regarding the independence bit, but I draw the line at how we got here. Ukraine should get all the help we can give it to survive and stop russia from doing more damage.

The fact that they are willing to use this switch in this way is far more damning than if they had done nothing at all. The problem is that one of the so called 'allies' here is behaving in ways that make it very difficult to sustain using that term.

And military alliance or not, there is such a thing as justified defense and it used to be in the decades leading up to 2015 or so that the USA was a reliable defense partner. I realize that 10 years is a long time, but a lot of people have been very slow to realize how far the rot has worked its way in.

Weapons bought and paid for by EU money are being withheld, and that's in light of daily slaughter of Ukrainian civilians (I have no other word for what is happening there).

> Ukraine is in no military alliance

I agree with you this is the de facto situation, but they thought they were in an alliance because of the Budapest Memorandum.

It is hard to know the difference between what the US government tells the Oligarchs to do and what they tell the US government to do. They're effectively one and the same.

Scram, Elon.

I beg to differ. There's solid photographic evidence of him throwing a Heil Hitler salute a few years back. Plus, he's one of the white supremacists of South Africa.