Last week, the U.K. announced its largest ever military support package for Ukraine. The bill brings the U.K.'s total support for this financial year to '3 billion ' not quite the $50 billion the U.S. pledged recently, but still substantial. But while most of those funds will be spent on very traditional military hardware, a new tech initiative launched last weekend was aimed at enhancing Ukraine's asymmetric warfare capabilities against Russia. In fact, the London Defense Tech Hackathon was the first-ever event to bring together some of the U.K.'s brightest minds in technology, venture capital, and national security in a military setting. The idea was to hack together ideas to both assist Ukraine and create a far more porous layer between the worlds of fast-paced civilian tech and the very different world of the military. The event was put together by Alex Fitzgerald of Skyral and Richard Pass of Future Forces, and the two were joined by co-organizers that included the Honourable Artillery Company, Apollo Defense, Lambda Automata and D3 VC among others....
And in the case of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the remarkable destruction of Ukrainian history and heritage since 2022 hasn't been a matter of collateral damage. Rather, the Russian military has deliberately targeted museums, churches and libraries that are important to the Ukrainian people. It's impossible to document the full extent of the destruction, particularly in the active military zones in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, as archaeologists and filmmakers, we wanted to do what we could. This meant traveling to liberated villages, museums and churches in northern and eastern Ukraine adjacent to regions with ongoing fighting. In liberated parts of Ukraine, the bodies of the dead have long been carried away and, for the most part, buried in local cemeteries. But enter any formerly occupied city or town, and you'll immediately notice that the scars from battles that took place from March 2022 to July 2022 remain starkly visible. As we wound through small farming villages, we were struck by the ferocity and randomness of modern military firepower: One part of a village could be completely flattened, while a block down the road, the houses were untouched....
The recapture, by Ukrainian forces, of the oil and gas platforms off the coast of Crimea known as the 'Boyko towers' has both strategic and symbolic significance. Their position, between the westerly-most point of Crimea and Snake Island, in waters close to Ukraine's border with Romania, puts them in a key location for monitoring Russian activities in the Black Sea. Russia had seized control of these drilling platforms in 2015, in the wake of its annexation of Crimea the previous year. It used them for military purposes including installing radar equipment that gave them surveillance of the sea between Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula. Announcing the recapture of the platforms, which reportedly took place at the end of August, Ukraine's intelligence service, the GUR, stated that: 'Russia has been deprived of the ability to fully control the waters of the Black Sea, and this makes Ukraine many steps closer to regaining Crimea.' Though the Bokyo towers are oil and gas platforms, they contain helipads and have the potential to host missile systems. They also provide underwater and surface reconnaissance and monitoring. Control of the platforms greatly enhances Ukraine's ability to operate in the Black Sea, while at the same time reducing Russian capabilities....
Perfectly good aircraft are sitting idle in U.S. deserts, when they could be aiding Kyiv's counteroffensive....
