Eric Schmidt writing about the Ukraine / Russia drone war, not very +ve for Ukraine.
(www.foreignaffairs.com)
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Firing a rifle has a tendency to drop your hearing for a little bit. I know i sure as hell notice a difference when i have to rush out with the shotgun and don't have ear plugs in. If they've been in a firefight recently or done any suppressive fire to help someone move positions, their hearing might NOT be picking up that drone noise as easily as it would if you’re entrenched and hiding and not firing.
That's a good point. I saw an interview maybe a year ago with an English mercenary who went back home after just a few months. He estimated that he had lost about 40% of his hearing from the continuous shelling.
The addendum to that was his answer when the interviewer asked if any of the shelling had been close. He said that (IIRC) one had hit as close as 100m.
As far as being life-threatening from fragmentation, as long as you're in a trench or on the deck it doesn't sound that close. But having these enormous rounds rain down around everyone and blow up anywhere in the vicinity has got to be ear-shattering. Literally.
Warfare has changed so much, its not even funny. I’d honestly prefer just melee weapons and both sides lined up and let the one with guys standing be the victor. We have too many weapons and tactics that make being anywhere near a combat zone insanely dangerous. Guerrilla tactics, mines, chemical and biological weapons, artillery and naval shells coming in from 15+ miles away, missiles launched from further than that, snipers, IED’s, kids being strapped with explosives and sent as a suicide bomber, the list goes on. I’ll hate the bankers and politicians that make the mess but i feel for the warriors and soldiers on both sides of a conflict. Most aren’t being told the truth, and all are being used for someone else’s goals.
OMG, modern warfare is terrifying. We see war movies and they're dodging around during an artillery strike and exciting stuff like that. The real deal is that you're standing around smoking a cigarette on a sunny afternoon and then you're dead.
But you know what I see as the biggest "conspiracy" about warfare, modern of historical? You can find discussion on just about any aspect of it, but you'll find very little about the single most crucial aspect: how can this insanely anti-human activity even begin in the first place?
Even the Russians, for whom this is a just and necessary military action entered into reluctantly, talk very little about that. Why? I would say that the Russian leadership understands that the vast majority of the populace--in the West especially but even in Russia itself--is so far away from understanding how the world really works that it is a pointless task.
When you consider what "They" have done to people's minds, the details of warfare begin to fade. I mean, you can build a drone to blow up a whole giant steel tank, but how do you build a drone to convince someone the world they live in is not at all like they think it is?
The manipulation has gone on too long to count. Too many good people slaughtered over bullshit lies. I don’t think we’ll ever get along fully. We’re all just too different.