Thanks. That makes sense. I did also find it odd a longer version of the video wasn't shown to see the aftermath so that raised my suspicion a bit.

Two Russian pilots ejecting into the ceiling due to a system malfunction. pic.twitter.com/KCpPQKaL7N

— Slava 🇺🇦 (@Heroiam_Slava) December 15, 2025

This is being reported across the net.

Has the hallmarks of ai to me.

Ukraine claiming to have hit a Kilo class sub in port using an underwater drone

Who?mikejones! said:

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Has the hallmarks of ai to me.

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The American accented rescuers shouting in English didn't give it away?

Ag with kids said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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shiftyandquick said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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The thread is about tactics and strategy and when strategy is being addressed in this static grinding stage of the war where tactics are fairly settled to infiltration attacks and drone warfare, strategy predominates, and that is largely influenced at this stage by geopolitics. Neither side can win this war as things stand. It could be a generational conflict, one of the longest in modern history, so the focus has become the strategy around how to bring it to an end versus letting it drag on. Russian strategy is simply to slowly trade relatively useless and cheap poorly trained infantry and older vehicles for a few dozen or couple of hundred meters of ground a day while maintaining the pressure of drone attacks on infrastructure. Ukrainian strategy is to make this as costly as possibly while buying time to hope Russia tires of the war or something else internal or external for Russia takes precedence.


I for one don't understand why the Trump as administration believes they will get any good faith negotiations out of Russia. Russia will lie regarding any future intent if it serves their purposes so if they make promises (bribes) for economic deal that would seem to benefit the USA to pressure Ukraine to concede favorable terms for Russia, there is no reason to believe Russia will adhere to any of the terms. As such, part of Russian strategy is to string the Trump administration along by telling them what they want to hear regarding the potential for future economic deals while simply continuing the grinding war. This maintenance of the status quo seems to be satisfactory for Russia.

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Why Trump has adopted Russia's positions is a source of mystery. Other than of course the promise of money for the US.

Most other presidents would have used a stick to bring Russia to the table. But Trump and Biden have been extremely weak and ineffective and lackluster in their support.

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It's not a mystery. The Democrats supported arming Ukraine, so Trump took the exact opposite position. That's partisan politics.

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What a terrible take. Trump has managed to get the useless NATO membership off their ass and spending on defense. He had to do that by withholding aid to put enough fear into them to galvanize them into action.
The US is not their Daddy always ready to bail them out of their own piss poor decision making.

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What a terrible take. Name a policy position that Democrats and Republicans share. You can't because their default is the opposite of whatever the other side is doing.

Perfect example is Trump supporters fellating him about Operation Warp Speed at the end of 2020 and Democrats ****ting all over him for going around the normal FDA approval process and swearing up and down they'd never take the "Trump vaccine." As soon as Biden is sworn in, Democrats are touting their efforts at rolling out covid vaccines as fast as possible and Republicans are crying about how it's untested and only has emergency FDA approval. There were posters here going through Olympic level mental gymnastics to justify their flip flopping when their posts from August 2020 were quoted in April 2021. It was truly a sight to see.

And Trump had **** to do with the increase in European defense spending. The Europeans started ramping up defense spending in 2022/2023. Trump has probably increased the urgency of an independent defense industrial base, but they were well on their way to rearming before November 2024.

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Ummm...one of the largest spikes in EU NATO defense spending occurred during 2017-2019. Largely due to Trump's anti-NATO rhetoric.

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EU defense spending grew 10% over that time. It also grew 10% from 2015-2017. In fact it's pretty linear from 2015-2021. From 2022-24 it grew 33%. The jump from 2022-23 is not one of the largest spikes in European spending, it's the largest spike, just beating out 2002-03 and the start of the war in Iraq percentage-wise.

Trump is not the driver of European defense spending his followers like to think he is, and this is not some kind of 10D chess.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Ag with kids said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

shiftyandquick said:

---

MouthBQ98 said:

---

The thread is about tactics and strategy and when strategy is being addressed in this static grinding stage of the war where tactics are fairly settled to infiltration attacks and drone warfare, strategy predominates, and that is largely influenced at this stage by geopolitics. Neither side can win this war as things stand. It could be a generational conflict, one of the longest in modern history, so the focus has become the strategy around how to bring it to an end versus letting it drag on. Russian strategy is simply to slowly trade relatively useless and cheap poorly trained infantry and older vehicles for a few dozen or couple of hundred meters of ground a day while maintaining the pressure of drone attacks on infrastructure. Ukrainian strategy is to make this as costly as possibly while buying time to hope Russia tires of the war or something else internal or external for Russia takes precedence.


I for one don't understand why the Trump as administration believes they will get any good faith negotiations out of Russia. Russia will lie regarding any future intent if it serves their purposes so if they make promises (bribes) for economic deal that would seem to benefit the USA to pressure Ukraine to concede favorable terms for Russia, there is no reason to believe Russia will adhere to any of the terms. As such, part of Russian strategy is to string the Trump administration along by telling them what they want to hear regarding the potential for future economic deals while simply continuing the grinding war. This maintenance of the status quo seems to be satisfactory for Russia.

---

Why Trump has adopted Russia's positions is a source of mystery. Other than of course the promise of money for the US.

Most other presidents would have used a stick to bring Russia to the table. But Trump and Biden have been extremely weak and ineffective and lackluster in their support.

---

It's not a mystery. The Democrats supported arming Ukraine, so Trump took the exact opposite position. That's partisan politics.

---

What a terrible take. Trump has managed to get the useless NATO membership off their ass and spending on defense. He had to do that by withholding aid to put enough fear into them to galvanize them into action.
The US is not their Daddy always ready to bail them out of their own piss poor decision making.

---

What a terrible take. Name a policy position that Democrats and Republicans share. You can't because their default is the opposite of whatever the other side is doing.

Perfect example is Trump supporters fellating him about Operation Warp Speed at the end of 2020 and Democrats ****ting all over him for going around the normal FDA approval process and swearing up and down they'd never take the "Trump vaccine." As soon as Biden is sworn in, Democrats are touting their efforts at rolling out covid vaccines as fast as possible and Republicans are crying about how it's untested and only has emergency FDA approval. There were posters here going through Olympic level mental gymnastics to justify their flip flopping when their posts from August 2020 were quoted in April 2021. It was truly a sight to see.

And Trump had **** to do with the increase in European defense spending. The Europeans started ramping up defense spending in 2022/2023. Trump has probably increased the urgency of an independent defense industrial base, but they were well on their way to rearming before November 2024.

---

Ummm...one of the largest spikes in EU NATO defense spending occurred during 2017-2019. Largely due to Trump's anti-NATO rhetoric.

---

EU defense spending grew 10% over that time. It also grew 10% from 2015-2017. In fact it's pretty linear from 2015-2021. From 2022-24 it grew 33%. The jump from 2022-23 is not one of the largest spikes in European spending, it's the largest spike, just beating out 2002-03 and the start of the war in Iraq percentage-wise.

Trump is not the driver of European defense spending his followers like to think he is, and this is not some kind of 10D chess.

---

Trump is however supporting Russia. It's why we've provided 0 military or economic support since he came into power. It's also why we're trying to force a terrible peace deal down Ukraines throat without any semblance of coherent strategy.

People love his dialog on NATO spending but it really misses the mark on historical context. Do any of you really think that we wanted Germany to build a powerful military especially after the collapse of the USSR? Is it possible that maybe we extracted serious indirect value by being Europe's security guarantor? If our goal was simply to raise NATO military spending then what's the point of threatening to invade Greenland? What are the costs of unwinding our support for NATO?

NATO military spending is rising as a response to the threat of Russia not Trump. It's why the Baltic states and Poland have never taken their eye off the ball and why it's hard to get Spain to commit even today.

Knowing how little Trump understands the details and how unmotivated he is to actually understand the world around him, I am fairly convinced he believes military spending is a direct cash transfer to the US. While there historically there has been a general association of military spending and buying from American companies, our reckless foreign policy is untethering that trend as fast as possible. His behavior has actually hurt American weapons makers relative to European ones in an environment that has Europe rapidly increasing military spending. So the benefits of their military spending increase are not coming our way the way they would have under better leadership.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Ag with kids said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

AlaskanAg99 said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

shiftyandquick said:

---

MouthBQ98 said:

---

The thread is about tactics and strategy and when strategy is being addressed in this static grinding stage of the war where tactics are fairly settled to infiltration attacks and drone warfare, strategy predominates, and that is largely influenced at this stage by geopolitics. Neither side can win this war as things stand. It could be a generational conflict, one of the longest in modern history, so the focus has become the strategy around how to bring it to an end versus letting it drag on. Russian strategy is simply to slowly trade relatively useless and cheap poorly trained infantry and older vehicles for a few dozen or couple of hundred meters of ground a day while maintaining the pressure of drone attacks on infrastructure. Ukrainian strategy is to make this as costly as possibly while buying time to hope Russia tires of the war or something else internal or external for Russia takes precedence.


I for one don't understand why the Trump as administration believes they will get any good faith negotiations out of Russia. Russia will lie regarding any future intent if it serves their purposes so if they make promises (bribes) for economic deal that would seem to benefit the USA to pressure Ukraine to concede favorable terms for Russia, there is no reason to believe Russia will adhere to any of the terms. As such, part of Russian strategy is to string the Trump administration along by telling them what they want to hear regarding the potential for future economic deals while simply continuing the grinding war. This maintenance of the status quo seems to be satisfactory for Russia.

---

Why Trump has adopted Russia's positions is a source of mystery. Other than of course the promise of money for the US.

Most other presidents would have used a stick to bring Russia to the table. But Trump and Biden have been extremely weak and ineffective and lackluster in their support.

---

It's not a mystery. The Democrats supported arming Ukraine, so Trump took the exact opposite position. That's partisan politics.

---

What a terrible take. Trump has managed to get the useless NATO membership off their ass and spending on defense. He had to do that by withholding aid to put enough fear into them to galvanize them into action.
The US is not their Daddy always ready to bail them out of their own piss poor decision making.

---

What a terrible take. Name a policy position that Democrats and Republicans share. You can't because their default is the opposite of whatever the other side is doing.

Perfect example is Trump supporters fellating him about Operation Warp Speed at the end of 2020 and Democrats ****ting all over him for going around the normal FDA approval process and swearing up and down they'd never take the "Trump vaccine." As soon as Biden is sworn in, Democrats are touting their efforts at rolling out covid vaccines as fast as possible and Republicans are crying about how it's untested and only has emergency FDA approval. There were posters here going through Olympic level mental gymnastics to justify their flip flopping when their posts from August 2020 were quoted in April 2021. It was truly a sight to see.

And Trump had **** to do with the increase in European defense spending. The Europeans started ramping up defense spending in 2022/2023. Trump has probably increased the urgency of an independent defense industrial base, but they were well on their way to rearming before November 2024.

---

Ummm...one of the largest spikes in EU NATO defense spending occurred during 2017-2019. Largely due to Trump's anti-NATO rhetoric.

---

EU defense spending grew 10% over that time. It also grew 10% from 2015-2017. In fact it's pretty linear from 2015-2021. From 2022-24 it grew 33%. The jump from 2022-23 is not one of the largest spikes in European spending, it's the largest spike, just beating out 2002-03 and the start of the war in Iraq percentage-wise.

Trump is not the driver of European defense spending his followers like to think he is, and this is not some kind of 10D chess.

---

Look, I'm not a Trump sycophant.

But, the increase in spending from 2017-2019 was one of the largest in decades.

Quote:

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President Trump's leadership has changed the outlook for NATO. During a two-year period in Trump's first term, from 20172019, new NATO defense expenditures increased by $130 billion, the biggest spike in a generation.

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Kind of interesting that this was right after Trump said he was seriously thinking about bailing on NATO if they didn't up their spending.

I'm sure everything was just coincidental, though, if it makes you happy to not give Trump any credit...

BTW, a big chunk of that increase in EU defense spending from 2022-2023 wasn't for NATO; it was to spend that money in support of Ukraine... which is an entirely different discussion.



BUT...I'm going to stop this discussion here and won't respond further on this. It is detouring from the purpose of the thread.

I know. I'm just saying it is part of a much larger and longer trend. Trump had a lot of anti-NATO rhetoric, but spending was already increasing before he was even a candidate, and the spending in 2017 had already been budgeted before he even won.

Yes, a lot of that spending went to Ukraine, but they've continued it and are backfilling/expanding everything they're sending. Trump's rhetoric probably has some effect, but the Europeans also know he's on his second term and things can easily swing back pretty soon. As far as they're concerned, he may be a political blip, but Russia is now an existential and immediate problem.

I will give Trump credit for the Europeans deciding to expand their own defense industrial base though. The latest EU defense proposals are seeking to expand their domestic manufacturing capabilities. That said, they were looking to expand their production of things like artillery shells domestically anyway because they have realized they cannot keep up in a large scale conflict and the smart munitions NATO has come to rely on will not be enough on the modern battlefield.

Pretty sure your numbers include our spending as well. Europe's defense spending didn't increase by $130 billion. More like $20 billion.

European spending
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/euu/european-union/military-spending-defense-budget

US spending
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget