I kind of feel like people are neglecting some of this here. Like, yes, any pro tennis player would absolutely crush me. I would never get close to taking a game. However, even pro players lose points because they make mistakes. I don’t need to claim that I’m any match for a pro in order to claim that there’s a non-zero chance that they could blunder a single point.

Saying that it’s absolutely absurd that I could take a single point against someone like Serena is essentially saying that it’s absurd to suggest that there’s a decent chance Serena could make a mistake once in 48 points.

I honestly don’t know how good those odds would be, but it doesn’t seem crazy to me to suggest it could happen in around 1/10 matches.

Exactly! It’s choosing not to do so which makes some companies special!

Unclear to me at what stage the “self-guided” part kicks in here. I can imagine several cases where these can be extremely useful though: One is simply having a self-guidance mechanism that can be turned on at the final approach to when signal can fail due to proximity to the ground. Another case altogether could be to let a munition loiter, and then just activate a self guided attack once a target is found. Also, I could imagine that they could let a drone “taxi” itself to a loitering position before a pilot takes over.

Combine some of these, and suddenly a single pilot can effectively fly a dozen drones at the same time, only needing to check in on a loitering drone, and select targets before checking the next drone. If a drone is used to hit a target, three more can be en route to the location, and the pilot can just take over control as they arrive.

Seeing as one of the disadvantages of drones is that they’re relatively slow, this could massively multiply the amount of damage a single pilot can do!

In case you don’t follow Norwegian politics very closely: There are several parties that are pushing for us to give 10-100 times this (new) amount. We probably (unfortunately) won’t see that happen within the next couple weeks, but there seems to be political consensus that more is coming, but that the details need to be ironed out.

I mentioned in another comment that Norway could literally match US donations so far in the war dollar for dollar if the decision is made to really start tapping in to the wealth fund. I’ll be voting for a party that pushes for that.

Of course, that’s why I specified (in terms of dollars). I guess my line of thinking is that if Norway declared tomorrow that they had dumped 150 billion EUR into buying weapons, and would buy from whoever could deliver the fastest, we would probably see an increase in weapons manufacturing on European soil the likes of which we haven’t seen since WWII. That’s what we need right now.

The second element (which I honestly think is at least as important) is showing the rest of Europe how it’s done. By pushing ahead and doing something symbolic like immediately picking up the slack from the US (in dollars) we can hopefully shake other countries into recognising how high of a priority this should be. It may also help people shake off the “what are we going to do” feeling, by showing what we’re going to do: Prioritise this above all else.

While this is great, I’m still firmly in the camp that we are spending an embarrassingly low amount on both our own military, Ukraine, and up-arming ourselves and allies in general.

Norway has made an absurd amount of money on the increase in gas prices due to the war, and the rule regarding the wealth fund was put in place to ensure the benefit of future generations. I’m still young enough (< 30) that the latter to some extent applies to me. There is no better investment for future generations than ensuring that we, Ukraine, and our allies, are armed to the teeth asafp.

To be absolutely clear: A quick search tells me that the EU and member states have donated a total of 145 billion USD to Ukraine. Norway has the resources to on its own match that - dollar for dollar - and it would cost ≈ 7 % of our “wealth fund”. This makes the notion of giving donations measured in the single-digit billions absolutely embarrassing.

Norway has the ability to stand up now and show that we’re good for something. We can pick up the slack from the paused US support (in terms of dollars) tomorrow if our politicians choose to do so. If no one leads the way we are doomed to fail. I believe that Norway has the opportunity to show we mean business, and that failure to do so will go down in history as a massive mistake. My vote this autumn is going to whatever party that best understands this.

To follow that up: I think the only thing that has a chance of shaking the American people out of this craze is that the trump admin crashes and burns the US economy on a level that hasn’t been seen for 100 years. Something so bad people are forced to remember what happened that time they elected a populist dictator’s puppet for president.

The danger with that is what we’ve seen before (and which the people planning stuff like Project 2025 may be banking on): A broken economy breeds populism and fascism. In that sense, there’s the paradoxical danger that trump running everything to the ground may push even more people into the maga-camp.

To look at the positive side: Even if the US lifts all sanctions, the major gas exports from Russia were through pipelines going to Europe, and that won’t be affected. Also, if I remember correctly, the US is a net exporter of petroleum products, which means they likely won’t be importing that much from russia even if sanctions are lifted.

Finally, the EU has a bunch of sanctions in place that hit anyone trying to help russia circumvent EUA sanctions. If the US lifts sanctions, they might actually start getting hit by some of these secondary effects. The more severely trump fucks up the US, the harder the eventual backlash will hopefully be.