Exactly. Look at a current US Navy ship like the USS Beloit and it has a reported draft of 14 feet. You’re going to want to launch a ship like that into deeper water than what it drafts so that it doesn’t bottom out and damage the hull.

It’s possible they’ve still been damaged enough to be unusable. Heat and/or shrapnel from those airplanes that burned could have easily caused damage that these satellites can’t see.

This is why they used small FPV drones and launched them just a few kilometers away. There was virtually no warning, and small low flying drones would be very difficult for any automated defensive system to detect in time.

I think the Russians also felt a false sense of security given how far these airbases are from Ukraine. They may have had defenses in place for larger drones flying all the way from Ukraine, but again, such a system would have difficulty with small drones flying at treetop level from a very short distance.

It’s not just a theory. The US military has confirmed that is what they are trying to do:

https://www.twz.com/air/russia-covering-its-aircraft-in-tires-is-about-befuddling-image-matching-seekers-u-s-military-confirms

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I’m cautiously optimistic that this isn’t all his cards.

Given the recent announcements that countries like Germany have given Ukraine the ok to use their long range weapons against targets inside Russia I think it’s just a matter of time before we see this happen.

Frankly I was wondering why the bridge wasn’t attacked very quickly after that announcement was made. But with this report of the underwater sabotage I think it now makes sense. This underwater explosion likely took a long time to plan and carry out, and Ukraine probably wanted to see the results of it before launching any long range strikes on the bridge.

If there are other underwater explosives that have already been planted then I’d expect to see them detonated as well. After that then Ukraine might very well launch long range missiles to target the section(s) of the bridge that have now been weakened.

Exactly. As a courtesy they might give trusted allies a few hours notice, or at least inform them when the op has started. But unless they needed the assistance of an ally in planning and preparing such an attack then informing anybody well ahead of time serves no useful purpose at all.

No. The sequel to that one.

Kind of makes me hope for a delayed reaction like the dam explosion in the movie Force 10 From Navarone.

I would love to see Ukraine trolling Russia with this.

Detonate an underwater charge that weakens one of the bridge supports. Wait while the Russians react, examine the bridge, etc.

A dozen or so hours later detonate another hidden underwater charge on another support a few hundred yards away.

Repeat the process after random delays until so many supports are weakened that the bridge collapses under its own weight.

Not a data target, but my wife was pick pocketed in Paris a few months ago. We were boarding a train to the airport and somebody yanked it from her pocket as she boarded with her hands full.

We both have iPhones. Within five minutes while sitting on the train I remotely locked her phone then wiped it. Never saw any fallout that could be attributed to somebody having access to it.

This is the sort of op they would typically notify an ally of when it is actually imminent or just got started. If Biden was still in the White House my guess is he would have been given roughy 72 hours notice or less.

GPS and similar systems are extremely low power, meaning it’s trivial to jam them with a higher powered signal closer to potential targets. And you can easily counter multiple navigation systems by broadcasting over a wide range of frequencies.

Much better to augment radio navigation with inertial navigation, terrain mapping, etc.

Not to mention the high explosives used to trigger nuclear chain reactions degrades over time as well. There are lots of parts to a nuclear weapon that must be regularly maintained/replaced for the weapon to remain viable.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Ukraine over the past few years it’s that they are incredibly resourceful. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they have other novel attacks in various stages of planning. Of course they now have to wait and see how Russia changes their defenses as a result of this attack…

I think you need to wait a generation of car buying before really coming to any conclusions.

I bought a Model Y when they first came out and still drive it, but I’m 99% sure I’ll be “one and done” with Tesla once it’s time for me to buy my next car. There are some features of my Tesla that I like, but plenty I dislike as well. I don’t agree with Elons ideas of minimizing controls, relying on vision for all automation, etc. The idea of windshield wiper controls being a couple levels deep in touchscreen menus is a terrible idea.

The only way I’d buy a second Tesla a few years down the line is if they gave up on the minimalist/touchscreen route and started reintroducing physical controls for most functions. But it’s a safe bet Elon will never allow that as long as he’s running things.

When I do finally decide to replace my Tesla a few years from now there will be significantly more EV options out there. And with the J3400 connector now an open standard and Tesla SuperChargers supporting non -Tesla EV’s, there’s even less incentive to stay with a Tesla EV.

Moving further away likely won’t deter Ukraine. The Russians will need to start surrounding their airfields with a lot more, and better, defensive capabilities. The question is whether they have the ability to do that or not.

I read elsewhere that these were autonomous drones. It likely wouldn’t be terribly difficult to program a drone to fly to a specific location, look for something shaped like an aircraft, then fly into it.

You could also program one or two drones to fly to a specific location, record video for 5-10 minutes, then fly to a different landing zone where one person is waiting to recover the video.

I recall that people blocked Waymo cars at one point by simply placing orange cones in front of them. Given Teslas only use cameras I wonder if you could just slap a sticker of an orange cone (or just a splash of orange paint) on the hood and confuse it enough that it wouldn’t move…

Edit: Or, if you really want to be a dick, get some black stickers (the stronger the glue the better) and surreptitiously put them over one or more cameras.