Ukraine's Drones Force Russian Convoys To Ride With Gun Trucks and A Prayer

With Russia losing 500 trucks a day, on average, it would appear that the mobile anti-drone truck gun teams aren't working - and that the Russian prayers are not being heard. JL

David Axe reports in Euromaidan Press:

Russian logisticians are desperately scrambling to save their truck convoys from Ukrainian drones. Besides rerouting convoys away from the most vulnerable highways, some commanders are also deploying mobile gun teams to escort the cargo trucks. Ukrainian drone units flying jam-resistant middle-strike drones with AI-assisted targeting—the $5,000 Swift Beat Hornet is one of the most common—initially targeted convoys traveling along the most obvious routes, including the west-to-east M-14 highway connecting southern Russia to occupied Crimea. The M-14 is the Ukrainian portion of the wider European E-58 highway. By late May, they were tallying hits on 500 Russian trucks every day, a ninefold increase on the overall average of daily truck strikes since February 2022. Just 3,500 Russian cargo trucks plied the M-14 every day, so the losses were significant. 

OpenAI Considering "Steep" Price Cuts To Compete With Anthropic

Amidst the euphoria generated by SpaceX's IPO yesterday, which apparently suggests to many that there is nowhere to go but up for AI, the two real AI leaders - OpenAI and Anthropic - who are also planning for stratospheric IPOs, are locked in brutal competition. And that is heightened by growing reluctance on the part of corporate customers to continue to pay eye-watering sums for AI access. 

As a result, OpenAI is actively contemplating significant price cuts to keep customers because it thinks Anthropic will do the same. As a general rule of economics, and even of tech, this does not bode well for hockey stick financial projections on which the two firms' valuations are currently based. Just sayin'. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz:

OpenAI is considering significant price cuts to its AI services as it looks to pull customers away from rival Anthropic. Tokens are among the areas where OpenAI is considering charging less, driven partly by expectations that Anthropic will pursue its own reductions. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged pricing pressure from business customers "a huge issue." Business leaders have grown increasingly reluctant to authorize large AI spending. Steep discounting would put additional pressure on two businesses that are already deep in the red, given the massive infrastructure expenditures involved in powering AI systems at scale even as both companies prepare for IPOs.

The War In Ukraine Is the Last In Which Soviet Armor Will Fight

It is not so much that tanks are obsolete, though that is still being determined by drone warfare developments on both sides, but that the Kremlin has almost completely exhausted the stockpiled inventory it had accumulated over eight decades before invading Ukraine. 

While some remain to be upgraded, their value had diminished in light of the contemporary battlefield's challenges. JL

Jompy reports in Fronts.Co:

This will be the last great war fought with Soviet-era armor. The Ukraine invasion war’s opening months were characterized by losses we can politely call 'eyewatering' That Russia had started deploying ancient T-54/55s in summer 2023 was proof of how far they had to reach to keep their formations equipped, and even then they were frequently understrength. (Now) armor is) still being used, but rarely and almost never in the amounts it used to be; a few tanks and IFVs trying small pushes, or tanks used as APCs to transport infantry. The loss of the vast Soviet stockpiles means the capability to quickly regenerate after attritional warfare won’t be there anymore for Russia. They’ll have to change their approach to warfare, not being able to throw massive armored pushes at the enemy anymore nor waste any piece of equipment

Ukraine Has Now Turned Crimea From An Asset To A Liability For Russia

What is happening to Crimea right now is emblematic of the larger strategic failure with Putin's overall Ukrainian invasion strategy. Economically, the areas he has captured have either been reduced to smoking heaps of rubble (thanks to Russia's indiscriminate bombardment tactics) which means, rather than contributing to the Russian economy, they will require years of investment and rebuilding from Kremlin funds; and militarily they have become a trap in which tens of thousands of Russian soldiers or secret police are required to keep them quiescent. 

Crimea is a microcosm of this larger problem. It has been bombarded by the Ukrainians since the beginning of the invasion to such a degree that the Black Sea Fleet had to flee Sevastopol, its storied headquarters for centuries. Ukraine has also struck Russia's Crimean air defenses, its airfields and its logistics centers which a few years helped support Russian attacks in southern Ukraine. The result is that Crimea has turned from an asset to a liability: much of its military infrastructure is in ruins, it needs troops, artillery, planes, air defenses and investment - which might more effectively be sent to other sectors - in order not to fall to the Ukrainians. But due to Ukraine's increasingly successful 'logistics lockdown' of the routes and bridges to Crimea, it has become a sinkhole of suboptimally deployed resources . JL

Stefan Korshak reports in Medium and Dmytro Basmat reports in the Kyiv Independent:

Ukraine's drone forces struck an S-400 air defense position in Kurortne and severely damaged the Black Sea Fleet Naval Aviation command center in Sevastopol. This is part of a broader campaign that has steadily degraded Russia's air defenses and logistical infrastructure across the peninsula. Several other air defense systems were degraded to pave the way for deeper attacks. Attacks also struck roads, bridges, supply depots, temporary headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol as well as airfields in Kacha and Saki. This is a calculated bombardment campaign aiming to cut Crimea off from the mainland logistically; ruin the Russian Crimea/Azov Sea economy, especially the summer holiday season, because tens of thousands of canceled tours can’t be spun by the Kremlin; reach a point where Russian forces north of Crimea are so poorly-supplied, they will become so weak, they will be vulnerable to an offensive and possible breakthrough.

Anthropic's Mythos Warning Was Both Responsible - and Clever Marketing

As today's SpaceX IPO reveals, marketing and scarcity remain among Silicon Valley's most potent assets, something their dotcom predecessors honed to a fine skill. 

While it would be inaccurate to claim the maneuvering around Anthropic's Mythos is misleading, it is fair to say that promotion is still an important part of the tech oeuvre, especially in the early stages before customer experience and knowledge surpasses suppliers optimistic claims. JL

Ashley Capoot reports in CNBC and Blake Montgomery reports in The Guardian :

Two months after Anthropic rolled out Mythos to a limited number of users, citing concerns about the AI model’s potential to do damage, the company is ready to release it to the public. With the launch of Claude Fable 5, Anthropic is honoring its “eventual goal” to deploy Mythos-class models at scale. It’s also capitalizing on growing momentum and investor interest ahead of a massive IPO. Anthropic will be under pressure to justify it’s valuation, and Claude Fable 5 could become a valuable new money-maker. The model costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, The technology is powerful, but so is the manipulation of attention. “Mythos is a real development and Anthropic was right to treat it seriously,” (but) it is clever marketing to say: “You can’t have this; it’s too strong.” Nothing sparks a stronger desire than withholding. 

Real-Time Satellite Intel Is Making Ukrainian Drone Strikes Deadlier

In another first for the Ukrainian military, its drone teams now have direct access to unclassified, commercial satellite imagery - the same used to update Google Maps - to improve the speed, precision and lethality of their drone strikes against Russian targets. 

The imagery and data are fed directly to the laptops, phones or tablets being used by soldiers in the field in as little as 15 minutes after it is requested, shortening the time it takes to identify and then strike what may be a fast moving target. JL

Heather Somerville reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Ukrainian drone teams are using images from commercial satellites operated by Colorado-based Vantor which have improved the speed and precision of Ukraine’s drone attacks. The rapid delivery to soldiers of geospatial intelligence has shortened by 90% the time it takes to locate and strike Russian assets. The images go directly from the satellite to the soldier’s tablet, phone or laptop in 15 minutes. Software lets users identify targets in detail. The program marks the first instance of unclassified, commercial satellite imagery going directly to a soldier to guide real-time battle decisions. The satellite intel allows them to do within hours what used to require weeks, because of the relative slowness of launching a drone and waiting for it to survey large areas. “Compressing the sensor-to-shooter cycle is the defining trend of this war at the tactical level. ” The same satellites used to update Google Maps have found a new and deadly application.

Putin Is Losing To Ukraine By Every Measure of Strategy, But Especially In Battle

The Russian military and its leader, Vladimir Putin, are losing the war with Ukraine according to every measure by which success in such conflicts is determined. 

But among those assessments, it is the repeated and now escalating failures on the battlefield which are especially noteworthy and strategically significant. For over four years the Russian army, navy and air force have failed - despite their initial advantages and repeated attempts - to overcome their Ukrainian adversaries. This inability to find a way to win on the battlefield has now led to an increasingly common belief among diplomatic and military experts, that Russia cannot win this war. JL

Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina:

Vladimir Putin is losing - not in one or two dimensions of the conflict, but in every dimension by which one might measure strategic progress - military, cognitive, moral, industrial, and economic. The central premise of Putin’s strategy has been attritional: trade bodies and equipment for territory at a rate Ukraine cannot sustain. (But) Russia’s spring offensive has produced catastrophic losses since its opening days. The seizure of Ukraine's Fortress Belt in 2026 is unlikely. Russia has been forced to redeploy elite units to respond to Ukrainian counterattacks - cannibalising its offensive to plug defensive holes. Putin is grinding through Russian men faster than Russia can produce them without results on the battlefield. Despite the support of China and North Korea, it has failed to leverage advantages that create impact on the ground or in aerial assaults on Ukraine. It does not appear able to win this war.