And that’s even before potential for things like microphone permissions for a device that’s on a warship.

Anyone that has access to starlink can track their vessel.

Regarding tracking – and I don’t know if that’s the main concern here – it won’t just be the Starlink transport itself. My guess is that they’re more worried about having devices connected to the Internet.

Let’s say that I have a smartphone. I download an app because it’s got a fun game attached. It comes up with some dialog about permissions when I installed it, which I promptly accept and forget about. This includes location permission. A month later, I get deployed, and I put my phone on the Wifi network that the nice ship IT person has set up that we all chipped in for. Yay!

So now, every now and then, maybe that app is phoning home and reporting my location using the GPS sensors in the phone. Now, maybe that game company is on the up-and-up. Maybe they’re selling data to some data broker. Maybe they’re in a country subject to legal requirements to turn over data to the government on demand. Maybe they’re securing their own systems to a level sufficient to keep out nation-state level intelligence agencies, and maybe they aren’t.

But my guess is that the Navy doesn’t want to deal with those possibilities.

I’m not sure how far I’d trust people to keep connected devices isolated to one of the official or pirate network.

I mean, the Navy can look into providing Starlink or a recreational net or a media server or something on the ship. I think that that’s legit. But I think it’s also fair that that’s gotta go through channels and have their information security people pound on it.

This is a warship. In the event of a conflict, China or whoever is going to be trying to kill the people on that ship and destroy the ship, no holds barred. Like, there are gonna be real resources put on exploiting any holes that can be found. She can’t just gamble with that.

We have, in the past, enjoyed major wins by compromising military naval communications in war. I’d rather not be on the receiving end of that.

And yeah, I totally get that that sucks if you’re stuck on an isolated ship, but that’s part of the job.

I’m okay, as an American citizen, with paying more to try to offset that. Like, in WW2, the Navy got the best meat cuts it could and stuff for subs to try make up for the fact that the submariners had rough living conditions. Maybe they can do something similar now. It said that one thing they wanted was sports scores…maybe the Navy can contract to get a dump of those broadcast, as I doubt that that’s much data. But what she did wasn’t the way to go about trying to provide a quality-of-life improvement for the ship.

The secondary explosions on those things certainly have a lot going on.

I don’t think that this ship is as significant as the impact on other ships. If Russia is going to be attacking any ships they can moving Ukrainian grain, that’s gonna make it far harder to get shipping companies to take on the risk of moving said grain by sea.

I recall someone who build some automated system to measure input latency on gamepads, who gathered data for a bunch over different interfaces, which is a subset of that. They had some sort of automated testing system, moved the controls automatically with a microcontroller-driven system.

looks

Neither of them are what I’m remembering, but it looks like multiple people have built input latency databases.

https://rpubs.com/misteraddons/inputlatency

https://gamepadla.com/

The second looks close to what you might want. Each controller has a page with a fair amount of information.

EDIT: I don’t think that this is what I was thinking of either, but looks like another microcontroller-based system to measure input latency:

https://github.com/maziac/lagmeter

EDIT2: Also not what I was thinking of, but yet another input latency measurement project:

https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/36811/1/ExtendedAbstractLatencyCHI2018.pdf

EDIT3: Also not what I was thinking of, but another:

https://github.com/finger563/esp-usb-latency-test

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3524458/dod-exercises-option-on-second-micro-nuclear-reactor-design/

DOD Exercises Option on Second Micro Nuclear Reactor Design

Sept. 13, 2023

As part of the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) initiative Project Pele, the Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded a contract option to X-energy, LLC of Rockville, Maryland in order to develop an enhanced engineering design for a transportable micro nuclear reactor.

The DOD uses approximately 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day—levels that are only expected to increase due to anticipated electrification of the vehicle fleet and maturation of future energy-intensive capabilities. A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that does not add to the DOD’s fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments.

Way ahead of you.

As that’s not a military use, and the deployment mechanism isn’t a tripwire trap, it’s not within the scope of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and not a war crime.

It might be domestic terrorism, depending upon whether there are plans for anyone to be nearby when it’s opened.

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

Adamsite or DM is an organic compound; technically, an arsenical diphenylaminechlorarsine, that can be used as a riot control agent. DM belongs to the group of chemical warfare agents known as vomiting agents or sneeze gases.

I think that we can probably consider this a vomiting agent, same sort of idea.

https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/CSP/C-14/open-forum/Dangerous-Ambiguities-Regulation-of-Riot-Control-Agents-and-Incapacitants-under-the-Chemical-Weapons-Convention_Rev.1.pdf

The CWC is comprehensive in the toxic chemicals it regulates.

• The definition of “toxic chemicals” under Article 2.2 includes chemicals that cause “temporary incapacitation”.
• Under the Convention, the use of such “toxic chemicals” would be forbidden unless employed for “purposes not prohibited” and as long as the “types and quantities” are consistent with such purposes.
• Among the “purposes not prohibited” is: “law enforcement including domestic riot control”.

I don’t think that use of a tripwire trap could reasonably be domestic riot control, so that’s probably in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Now, that’s just a treaty, not customary international law, so it doesn’t bind states not party to the treaty.

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

There are 193 states party to the treaty, but “Four UN states are not party: Egypt, Israel, North Korea and South Sudan.” For them, use would be acceptable.

https://www.amazon.com/Know-What-Means-Miss-Orleans/dp/B0000049XL/

Apparently that album has both a 1980 and 1987 version of the song available.

I feel like there’s room for a sort of giant montage here. Images like “German general discussing Kursk offensive”, “Wagner forces pushing towards Moscow”, “North Korea to Arm Russia”, Ukrainian forces rolling past some of those “Russia is here forever” billboards", etc.

I think that that’s a little from column A, a little from column B.

I don’t think that Russia is intentionally putting sub-par plate out there. I think that protective gear is procured with the intent of providing protection, and that if the armor doesn’t meet up with what it’s specified to do, that’s probably because somewhere, procurement or manufacturing screwed up in Russia.

On the other hand, militaries do really spend money and are willing to accept tradeoffs on things where they cannot protect a soldier and something makes a soldier feel safer, if they feel that it’ll make them more effective due to psychological impact. I remember reading about how American soldiers kept adding ad-hoc armor to tanks in WW2, sandbags and such. It wasn’t very effective. But…it also made soldiers feel safer to do it, so commanders often let them go ahead with it…shrugs My guess is that at least some of the benefit of body armor is that it does make soldiers more-comfortable with taking on dangerous tasks, and that that’s probably been taken into consideration.

https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/18hmn90/did_adding_sandbags_to_tanks_in_wwii_actually/

Only one official test of sandbags as an antidote against antitank rockets was recorded, which took place on 9 March 1945 in Europe. The side sponsons of a medium tank were covered with sandbags, and a Panzerfaust 60 was fired at it; the projectile blew away the sandbags and penetrated the armor. The same test was carried out against the glacis plate; the projectile tore off some of the sandbags but failed to penetrate the armor; whether the sandbags or armor set off the warhead or whether it ricocheted off because of the angle of attack is not specified. An Ordnance Department observer reported that “these tests are far from conclusive, and the psychological value of the sandbags is the greatest value actually derived,” while another observer stated that, “I gathered that if the bags did nothing more, they were certainly a morale factor as the crews were thoroughly impressed with them” after visiting units on the front lines that used them.

Ordnance Department officials in the European Theater, meanwhile, had a mixed reception to the sandbagging effort, despite the fact that in many cases, “Tankers disagreed, citing numerous examples where sandbagged tanks were not penetrated by panzerfaust or panzerschreck hits.” Third Army Ordnance personnel convinced Lieutenant General George S. Patton that the excess weight imposed on tanks by sandbags and their limited effectiveness against enemy projectiles was a net negative. Although American armored units had performed well during the Battle of the Bulge, the heavy tank losses incurred convinced many that something needed to be done to improve the armor protection of American tanks, and the Third Army devised a new up-armoring scheme in spring 1945:

The exception to the sandbag armor practice was Patton’s Third Army, which devised by far the best armor-protection package for its tanks. In the summer of 1944, the Third Army’s ordnance officers had convinced Patton that sandbags were worthless and detrimental to the tank’s suspension and powertrain, so Patton expressly forbade the use of sandbags in his units. Even Patton could not resist the clamor for better protection in the wake of the Battle of the Bulge, so he demanded that his ordnance officers come up with a better solution. The method was obvious–weld on more armor plate. The source was equally obvious–the numerous German and American tanks littering the Ardennes battlefield. In February 1945, Patton ordered that all M4A3 (76mm) in his units be fitted with additional front hull armor as well as turret armor if possible.

With the Third Army’s ordnance battalions already overworked, much of the work was handed over to three Belgian factories near Bastogne. The tanks of three armored divisions (the 4th, 6th, and 11th) were modified in this fashion, an average of 36 tanks per division out of their 168 Shermans. The program was both technically successful and very popular with the tank crews blessed with the appliqué armor. A 6th Armored Division tanker recalled how shortly after his M4A3E8 had been fitted with the armor in February 1945, his tank was hit by a 75mm round from a German armored vehicle, which knocked a piece of the appliqué armor from the hull but did not penetrate. This program was continued in March 1945 after Patton acquired a group of salvaged M4 tanks from the neighboring Seventh Army to cannibalize for armor plate.

Sixth Army Group ordnance personnel designed metal cages or baskets to hold sandbags against the side armor and turrets of their tanks (totaling three tons of sand), while those in the Ninth Army devised a configuration of a layer of spare track links on the glacis plate covered by sandbags. The 14th Armored Division came up with its own scheme of a layer of concrete reinforced by wire mesh and steel rods, held in place during construction by wooden forms.

Sources:

Coox, Alvin D., and L. Van Loan Naisawald. Technical Memorandum ORO-T-117, Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II. Baltimore: Operations Research Office, The Johns Hopkins University, 1951.

Zaloga, Steven J. Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II. Harrisburg: Stackpole Books, 2008.

I am confident that the US has samples of Russian body armor and has performed penetration testing and taken the results into consideration in doing its assessments.

This particular plate may be sub-par relative to how it’s supposed to perform. But body armor is not hard to get ahold of; you can’t keep it that secret. This isn’t going to be a MiG-25/F-15-type scenario, where the US dramatically misassesses capabilities and then goes to build something capable of defeating the (considerably-more-capable) system that it has theorized about. They’ll be making a decision based on being able to actually test the system in question.

descending speed between 15 m/s and 20 m/s

I’m assuming that they put larger parachutes on the thing before putting humans inside.

Also, the vehicle itself could easily land in a location from which it couldn’t be extracted (either because of a lack of suitable equipment or because of the location being virtually inaccessible). Several experiments were done in the 1970s in order to find a way to circumvent these limitations, including dropping the BMD with the two key crew members, the driver, and the gunner, seated inside the vehicle during the descent.

That, on the other hand, seems harder to resolve.

“On the down side, instead of losing a BMD in an inaccessible swamp, we’ve now lost a BMD containing several soldiers in an inaccessible swamp.”

“On the up side, our responsibility only covers air logistics and ends once we’ve delivered the hardware to the soldiers on the ground. Now it’s a ground forces problem.”

https://kyivindependent.com/latvia-says-russian-drone-crashed-on-its-territory/

The drone eventually crashed in Gaigalava parish in Rezekne district, 85 kilometers (52 miles) northwest of the Belarusian border, Kalnins said.

That’s about 360 mi (~580 km) from the closest point in Ukraine, with at least one country’s intermediate airspace in the way.

Here’s a somewhat relevant parable about how hard it can be to destroy a bridge during war.

Another two famous incidents:

The Battle of Sedan

At the opening of the Battle of France, German forces unexpectedly moved through the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse River. Containing the breakout would best be done by destroying the bridges captured. The Germans put up heavy air defense, and both the French and British air forces were unable to bring down the bridges. This was a strategically-critical battle that may have determined the fate of France in World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan_(1940)

In the central sector, at Gaulier, the Germans began moving 3.7 cm Pak 36 light infantry field artillery across the Meuse to provide support to infantry across the river. By 01:00 on 14 May, a pontoon bridge had been erected over which Sd.Kfz. 222, Sd.Kfz. 232 and Sd.Kfz. 264 armoured cars began to dismount in the bridgeheads. French reports spoke of German tanks crossing the bridges. Such reports were in error, as the first Panzers only crossed at 07:20 on 14 May. Prior to this, masses of lorries, armoured cars and other traffic had passed through, but not tanks.[53]

The capture of Sedan and the expansion of the bridgeheads alarmed the French who called for a total effort against the bridgeheads at Sedan, to isolate the three Panzer Divisions. General Gaston-Henri Billotte, commander of the First French Army Group, whose right flank pivoted on Sedan, urged that the bridges across the Meuse be destroyed by air attack, convinced that “over them will pass either victory or defeat!”.[46][53] General Marcel Têtu, commander of the Allied Tactical Air Forces ordered: “Concentrate everything on Sedan. Priority between Sedan and Houx is at 1,000,000 to 1”.[4]

No. 103 Squadron and No. 150 Squadron RAF of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF) flew 10 sorties against the targets in the early morning. In the process they suffered only one loss in a forced landing. Between 15:00–16:00, 71 RAF bombers took off escorted by Allied fighters. The impressive escort was offset by the presence of German fighter units that outnumbered the Allied escort fighters by 3:1.[60] No. 71 Wing RAF lost 10 Fairey Battles and five Bristol Blenheims. No. 75 Wing RAF lost 14–18 Battles and No. 76 Wing RAF lost 11 Battles.[60] Out of 71 bombers dispatched, 40–44 bombers were lost, meaning a loss rate of 56–62 percent.[60] The AASF lost a further five Hawker Hurricanes.[60] The AASF flew 81 sorties and lost 52 percent of its strength. No 2 Group RAF also contributed with 28 sorties.[61] The bombing results were poor, with three bridges damaged and one possibly destroyed.[60]

Another bridge that also famously held up to a lot of attacks in WW2, this at the end of the war:

The Battle of Remagen

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

After capturing the Siegfried Line, the 9th Armored Division of the U.S. First Army had advanced unexpectedly quickly towards the Rhine. They were very surprised to see one of the last bridges across the Rhine still standing.[5]: 263–264  The Germans had wired the bridge with about 2,800 kilograms (6,200 lb) of demolition charges. When they tried to blow it up, only a portion of the explosives detonated. U.S. forces captured the bridge and rapidly expanded their first bridgehead across the Rhine, two weeks before Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s meticulously planned Operation Plunder. The U.S. Army’s actions prevented the Germans from regrouping east of the Rhine and consolidating their positions.

The battle for control of the Ludendorff Bridge saw both the American and German forces employ new weapons and tactics in combat for the first time. Over the next 10 days, after the bridge’s capture on 7 March 1945 and until its failure on 17 March, the Germans used virtually every weapon at their disposal to try to destroy it. This included infantry and armor, howitzers, mortars, floating mines, mined boats, a railroad gun, V-2 rockets, and the 600 mm Karl-Gerät super-heavy mortar. They also attacked the bridge using the newly developed Arado Ar 234B-2 turbojet bombers. To protect the bridge against aircraft, the Americans positioned the largest concentration of anti-aircraft weapons during World War II[6]: 189  leading to “the greatest antiaircraft artillery battles in American history”. The Americans counted 367 different German Luftwaffe aircraft attacking the bridge over the next 10 days. The Americans claimed to have shot down nearly 30 percent of the aircraft dispatched against them. The German air offensive failed.[7][8]

On 14 March, German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered Schutzstaffel (SS) General Hans Kammler to fire V2 rockets to destroy the bridge. This marked the first time the missiles had been used against a tactical objective and the only time they were fired on a German target. The 11 missiles launched killed six Americans and a number of German citizens in nearby towns, but none landed closer than some 500 metres (1⁄4 mi) from the bridge.[2] When the Germans sent a squad of seven navy demolition swimmers wearing Italian underwater-breathing apparatus, the Americans were ready. For the first time in combat, they had deployed the top-secret Canal Defence Lights[9][10]: 410  which successfully detected the frogmen in the dark, who were all killed or captured.[11]

The sudden capture of a bridge across the Rhine was front-page news in American newspapers. The unexpected availability of a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine more than two weeks in advance of Operation Plunder allowed Allied high commander Dwight Eisenhower to alter his plans to end the war. The Allies were able to rapidly transport five divisions across the Rhine into the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland. The bridge had endured months of aircraft bombing, direct artillery hits, near misses, and deliberate demolition attempts. It finally collapsed at 3:00 pm on 17 March, killing 33 American engineers and wounding 63. But by then U.S. Army combat engineers had finished building a M1940 aluminum-alloy treadway bridge and a M1938 pontoon bridge followed by a Bailey bridge across the Rhine. Over 125,000 troops established a bridgehead of six divisions, with accompanying tanks, artillery pieces, and trucks, across the Rhine.[12] The Americans broke out of the bridgehead on 25 March 1945, 18 days after the bridge was captured.

Air defenses and air-to-surface delivery mechanisms have changed since then, but bridges can still hold up to a lot.

Sure, I’m not saying that it’s a bad option of the available options. I’m just saying that if it’s out of production and Shaheds are not, that means that it can only be used as a counter for a bounded period of time.

goes to look for numbers

https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/alabugas-greatly-expanded-production-rate-of-shahed-136-drones/

This is projecting maybe 6,000 Shaheds produced at Russia’s Alabuga facility by August 2025.

Alabuga documents show that the Shahed drone production facility was designed to make 10 drones per shift (see Figures 4 and 5). Assuming a five-day work week and 52-week operation, the plant operating at one shift per day could produce about an average of 217 drones per month or about 2600 drones per year. The contract quantity for 2023 was smaller, at an average of 6.9 drones per day, but the actual production rate for 2023 was on average 11.8 drones per workday. This means that Alabuga was operating slightly more than one shift per day and significantly exceeding its planned production rates for 2023. For 2024, Alabuga planned in its contract with Iran for an average monthly production rate of 226 per month, or about 10.4 per workday, about one full shift per workday. However, daily average production appears to have increased again in 2024, for an average of 18.8 drones per workday, or 407 drones per month, or two shifts per workday. Table 2 shows these results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-23_Hawk

Approximately 40,000 of the missiles were produced.

We’ve never fired the HAWK in war ourselves, and I’ve read that relatively-few have been used. So in an optimal scenario that said missiles haven’t been scrapped, all countries holding them are willing to provide MIM-23 missiles, that missiles haven’t decayed, that multiple launches are not done against individual targets to improve kill chances, and that no MIM-23s have been destroyed on the ground, at present production rates, total historical MIM-23 production would be able to last something like eight years of Shahed strikes. But my guess is that those are probably optimistic assumptions.

I also don’t know whether Russia may have access to sources of Shahed drones other than from Alabuga, like new Iranian-made drones.

One concern I have is that, as I understand things, the HAWKs are primarily used as a counter to the Shahed drones. That’s not to say that they don’t have uses other than that. But my understanding is that that’s a big part of where they went.

The MIM-23 missiles that it uses are an old missile, have not been produced for a long time. The Shahed drones are new production. There are large MIM-23 stockpiles, so they can hold off Shaheds for a while. But absent restarting production, they can’t do it forever.

Either the stockpile needs to be able to last until Russia quits with the Shaheds, or there has to be a transition over to some kind of newer counter to the Shahed at some point.

Oh, like, similar incident also attacking master boot records?

Yeah, I guess.

EDIT: Those guys apparently got identified and charged back in 2020:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/six-russian-gru-officers-charged-connection-worldwide-deployment-destructive-malware-and

Also GRU.