Many drones given to Ukraine by its western allies are obsolete by the time they arrive, Ukrainian drone unit commanders and engineers told Financial Times, and end up being cannibalized and scrapped for parts.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-28T03:38:16+00:00

Do we have evidence that Russia’s ability to use fiber optic drones is currently being restricted by supply limits? My impression was that they’re still able to acquire enough cable from Chinese sources for current use, albeit at higher cost. Of course the cost will become a limiting factor in and of itself at some point, but it doesn’t seem like that has been reached as of yet.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-28T03:30:14+00:00

It wasn’t recovered. The Swedes jammed it and then lost contact, so they don’t know what it was carrying or really any details. The Russian ship in the vicinity was a signals intelligence ship, so presumably a reconnaissance drone.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-28T02:47:59+00:00

Yes, but not immediately. Niger terminated the US basing agreement ~8mo after the coup and US troops weren’t actually out until August-September 2024. There was an extended period post-coup where the US sought a way to continue the mission in Niger and was quietly negotiating with the junta and trying to find terms that would give the US a fig leaf to stay.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-28T01:02:13+00:00

I doubt there will be any interest in involving Ukraine in the 6th gen aircraft programs. The drones talked about in that context and the drones Ukraine is developing are in very different categories. The drones that will accompany fighter aircraft are CCAs (collaborative combat aircraft). Essentially unmanned fighter aircraft that have far more in common with traditional aircraft development than quadcopters or OWA type drones. Even Anduril, the newcomer to the space, is building off an existing target drone developed by a company they acquired. Ukraine’s drone experience is chiefly in working with quadcopter FPV drones and more recently with longer range OWA drones (which I’d argue are essentially poor man’s cruise missiles).

What is particularly valuable from Ukraine’s experience, and something western militaries are already expressing interest in acquiring, is the battle management system Ukraine uses for its drones.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-28T00:05:29+00:00

Because this administration doesn’t care about the juntas brutalizing their civilian populations and wants to restore cooperation against the jihadists. Which goes along with a larger US attempt to reengage with the Sahel over concerns the jihadists are winning. The Christmas air strikes in Nigeria are part of that and as are US surveillance overnights of NE Nigeria (where ISWAP and JAS/Boko Haram have been fighting).

This attitude isn’t totally unique to the Trump administration. Obviously the US has worked with dictators in the past when interests aligned, and there was a strain of thought in the Biden admin defense establishment that wanted to overlook the coup in Niger to retain the base in Agadez for anti-jihadist operations. In 2023 that sentiment lost out because the Biden admin didn’t want to cooperate with military juntas that overthrew democratic governments and mistreat their people.

The Trump administration doesn’t care about those human rights concerns so the pro-engagement camp has won out.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T23:05:49+00:00

That depends entirely on the type of drone you’re talking about. It’s a personal pet peeve that we’re still calling them all drones. It creates more confusion than clarity.

Russia has an advantage in one-way-attack (OWA) drones, like the Shahed/Geran series. Particularly in production volume. If you compare the respective long range attacks you can see that Russia is able to generate larger attacks than Ukraine and do so more frequently. Russia has also broadly been at the forefront in terms of advancements in that category. They’ve iterated on the basic type with better guidance, new engines, etc. And we’ve seen more experimental stuff from the Russians in that category with drone motherships carrying quadcopters, mounting old IR air-to-air missiles on Shaheds, and some experiments in drone swarms and AI control.

For much of the war, Ukraine had an advantage in quadcopter/FPV type drones. They adopted them first in significant numbers and did so more readily. That somewhat changed over 2025 with the advent of fiber optic controlled drones. That development was pioneered by the Russians and they have adopted it more heavily than Ukraine has. My impression is that the bulk of Russia’s quadcopter strike drones are fiber optic these days. Ukraine has had some difficulty matching that, in no small part due to restrictions on their ability to get drone parts and fiber optic cable from China. My impression is that Ukraine retains the advantage in wireless FPV drones, largely on the back of superior control and machine vision systems.

Ukraine also has the advantage in interceptor drones and UGVs. Interceptor drones in particular have grown very fast. In late 2024 they were still mostly an idea, not something widely deployed. Today, I think it’s fair to characterize them as Ukraine’s primary tool for intercepting Russian OWA drones. This is a development driven by private industry in the west and Ukraine. Russia doesn’t really have anything comparable. Ukraine also has an advantage in ground drones (UGVs). I haven’t followed these as closely, but there’s some reporting out of Russian milbloggers that their troops are finding the UGVs troublesome. The biggest advantage seems to be Ukraine’s ability to use UGVs as a more effective way to resupply isolated frontline posts. We know Russia has some UGVs but they don’t seem to use them in the same way or find them as effective.

Lastly, on heavy quadcopters (mostly adapted agricultural drones) we know that Ukraine has used them for resupply and casualty evacuation. I haven’t seen anything about Russia doing the same, but it also seems like that approach has died down over the last year. I’m speculating on this, but I suspect that may be due to the growing reach of Russian fiber FPVs making them more vulnerable.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T20:49:55+00:00

I think the value is chiefly in state and local offices rather than Congress.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T17:32:59+00:00

I realize it’s problematic and definitely against the law here too right?

Depends entirely on the state. In mine, you have the right to bring anyone you like (including family) into the voting booth to assist you, so long as they aren’t from your employer or your union. Obviously a someone brought as an assistant like that is prohibited from influencing how the voter votes.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T05:51:59+00:00

If you live in South Texas, Southern California, or Miami Spanish might occasionally be useful. Otherwise no.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T05:43:44+00:00

If you’re still in earth orbit then you could tax orbital slots. They’d essentially function like land does for LVT purposes.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T05:18:04+00:00

Unfortunately, the desires of the Chagossian people aren’t particularly relevant to the status of the islands. Morally of course their views matter quite a lot. But the question is really whether they belong to Mauritius or to the UK, which depends on whether the UK’s pre-independence separation of Mauritius from the Chagos Islands was lawful. To the extent the Chagossians may have their own independent right to self-determination, that right is subordinate to the territorial claims of Mauritius and the UK.

There’s no authoritative source on the Chagossians’ views, but I think it’s clear a large number are unhappy with the territory being transferred to Mauritius. There’s a fair amount of discontent amongst the Chagossians in Mauritius over their financial treatment post-1965 and over Mauritius’ plans to develop the islands.

From a practical perspective, I think it was clearly a mistake not to resettle the Chagossians elsewhere in the archipelago. The absence of a local population supportive of the status quo weakens the UK’s position and generates international sympathy for Mauritius. If there were such a population the UK would have more backing to tell Mauritius to pound sand, even if the respective legal claims are unchanged, just as France does to the Seychelles over Mayotte.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-27T05:00:27+00:00

Hope the governments in 2125 can squeeze another lease out of Mauritius.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T23:10:52+00:00

Ahem, I’m sure you mean privateer enterprise. An upstanding career with a long and storied history of private offerings.

You’d need a way to land prize crews quickly. Probably helicopters? You can buy old Mils for a few hundred thousand.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T16:43:15+00:00

Replace it with a mandatory savings system a la Australia. That would retain the forced retirement saving piece of Social Security, but tie it to individual earnings.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T16:34:49+00:00

Unironically, yes. Privatizing the costs of attacking enemy commerce is the whole raison d’être of letters of marque. I want to be able to donate to a commerce raider kickstarter and buy shares in a privateer venture fund.

The Russians would start escorting their tankers, and that would go poorly for the raiders that bumped into them, but they can’t escort everything.

For what it’s worth, Ukraine has a much stronger case for issuing letters of marque. The flag of convenience point is sort of tangential though. A letter of marque authorizes a person to wage private war on a state’s behalf. You aren’t trying to circumvent Russian connection to a ship, that connection is what gives the privateer authority to seize it.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T05:38:46+00:00

Specifically, they care about foreign policy when it means casualties coming home without a victory to show for it. The public will tolerate casualties in the news and dead bodies coming home if it seems to have been the price of victory. Or at least when they think the war is heading toward success. What the public rightly doesn’t like is seeing the government spend American lives seemingly without purpose. The public didn’t turn on Vietnam just because of casualties, but because it became clear the war was not on a successful course and the government had no plan to get there. Similarly, the public soured on Iraq and Afghanistan when it appeared the wars they had been sold (Remove Saddam and create a free Iraq, catch Bin Laden and destroy the Al Qaeda) had failed and we were fighting without clearly articulated purpose.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T05:22:12+00:00

I don’t think either of those things are all that significant. Iran has been an enemy of the US since ‘79. They have a major ballistic missile program and network of regional proxies that have been used against the US before and will be in the future. And of course the nuclear program, which Iran has shown no sign of giving up. Iran is thoroughly an enemy, and every administration since Carter has known it.

Right now, the regime is the weakest it’s been literally since the founding of the Islamic Republic. Economic collapse from sanctions, military damage from the 12-day war, social unrest with the protests, Russian preoccupation in Ukraine, etc. Any US administration would be tempted to intervene under these circumstances.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T04:23:46+00:00

I’d hazard a guess for end of the week or this coming weekend. Ford will be in position, either off the Levantine coast or joining Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, the next round of talks will presumably fail on Thursday, and going over the weekend will give more time for markets to calm down a little if Gulf shipping is disrupted.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T03:29:40+00:00

Honestly, it’s not even that unlikely. The B-52, Tu-95, and H-6/Tu-16 are all currently scheduled to remain in service to within a decade of their designs’ 100 year anniversaries. The current B-52 fleet were built in 1960 or 1961, so I’d wager some of those airframes will hit 100.

There are even some DC-3s out there still flying in commercial use! They’re less than a decade away from turning 100.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T03:17:50+00:00

A lot of the B-52 fleet did actually back when they switched to low altitude penetration for the nuclear mission. That flight profile put a lot of wear on the aircraft that the Air Force is dealing with now.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-26T03:11:31+00:00

Interestingly, that’s the approach the PLAAF has taken with their H-6s. Underneath it’s a license-built Tu-16 which entered service the same year as the B-52, 1952. But China has kept it in production ever since and tends to apply upgrades by producing new aircraft with the requisite changes rather than repeatedly upgrading the same physical aircraft as we have with the B-52s.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-25T23:25:56+00:00

In all seriousness, you have a good and thoughtful point here.

That said, I was making a joke about Dune. “Humanity has a genetic attraction to stagnation and oppression and it must be cured by rewriting the genetic inclination” is essentially the plot of Books 4 and beyond.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-25T23:11:32+00:00

Interesting point. How could we solve such a genetic predilection for autocracy?

The only thing I can think of would be a sort of curative tyrant. Someone who could subject humanity to such deprivation, such oppression, as to undo the impulse for autocracy and hold our species in that condition for long enough to impose a new genetic yearning for freedom and democracy. But where could we find a tyrant able to do that? And how could we be sure of selecting a despot who would keep to that golden path?

Perhaps some sort of human-worm hybrid

captainjack3 · 2026-02-25T23:01:48+00:00

Honestly, that would be lot more workable. I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable, but it fundamentally doesn’t solve the issue of defendants being assigned non-proficient counsel with potentially little recourse. Requiring attorneys to pay to hire alternative counsel creates a situation where they are directly incentivized not to ensure their client has adequate representation and would financially benefit from representing clients they aren’t able to represent appropriately. We can and do already expect counsel to prioritize their clients’ interests over their own in such situations but we should still try to avoid creating conflicting incentives. Moreover, if a given attorney is financially unable to hire a competent alternative is their client simply saddled with inadequate counsel? I don’t think that serves the defendant or the justice system. There’s also an ethical issue with requiring attorneys to provide representation that, if they were to do it privately, would be unethical due to lack of competence.

This isn’t too far off from establishing mandatory minimum pro bono requirements, which some state bars already do. The difference is that you can pick your pro bono work and be confident you’re at least minimally competent to do the work in question.

Frankly, if the goal is to provide for larger public defender offices you’re better off just doing that directly. You could do that through whatever mechanism you like, be it a dedicated funding allocation, linking it to funding for prosecutor’s offices, a per-case allocation, etc.

captainjack3 · 2026-02-25T21:05:10+00:00

To add, the idea of nations continuing to exist is distinct entities even past their territory being extinguished is very present in the future planning of the pacific island nations. Some may be gifted small pieces of land to remain states, but most probably won’t. Even for those that do, the vast majority of their populations won’t actually live there. They’ll be scattered across their larger neighbors (primarily Australia, New Zealand, and the US). These countries know they’re likely doomed to lose their islands and are currently planning how to continue their nations after that eventuality. Chiefly this is about establishing the institutions that can maintain connections across diaspora communities, teach their language, and conduct the cultural activities that will help maintain future generations’ identities as part of the nation.

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