Post "Short-term topic poll" by "PerunAU" from patreon

Stefanie Butts

Second this comment

Moritz v. Looz

Came here to say exactly this. I greatly enjoyed the Rogue Trader series, would be delighted by a 1h power point on the economics of it. :-)

Bernhard Rohrer

Please do something about the Czech shell purchase

Iain McClatchie

The Ukrainians are now firing several Lyutyi drones at Russian oil refineries every day. They've hit over half the Russian oil refineries. I think we really need an analysis of * Russian oil refining slack capacity before the hits started * How much capacity has been lost * What have the Ukrainians hit, and how hard is it to fix * Does the rest of the world need Russia's refining capacity * Can Russia replace their refined diesel, jet fuel from other sources * How much diesel and jet fuel does Russia have in storage Oh, and * Any ideas how this Lyutyi drone manages to have such good accuracy over such long range while presumably GPS denied

JennyR

holding out hope for a nation study - Austria someday. It might be geopolitically entirely irrelevant to anyone but Hungarian irredentists, but it might be an interesting example of several things you've talked about

Paul Haynes

Hi, Harris. I got an email containing a question from you about my views on Hungary, but I cannot find your comment in Patreon for some reason, and the email just takes me back to Perun's original post. And, without the post you are replying to, it's difficult for me to answer your question! I have a lot of views on Hungary (!), especially the last 14 years, but I don't know which specific topic(s) you were referring to, and if I just randomly start commenting, we could be here for hours...

Paul Haynes

Can you remember which episode? I didn't think I'd missed any Perun, but obviously I have!

Scott Jacobs

A shame it isn't really possible, but I would love to see a "war economics of the Empire of Man" for April 1 some year.

Rune

I will just say that its kind of unfair of you to provide 4, all very interesting and important subjects, and then ask us to rank them. Personal I think I musk rank them in order of what I right now want to watch and learn more about as: 1st - Drones! (this might become a contester for an horror PowerPoint!). 2nd - NATO Eastern flank. 3th - Nation study: Pakistan (Because I just don't know much at all about this country and their actual capacities).

GS

There is a great, humorous and over the top series of videos on this topic on youtube channel Sarcasmitron

Niclas Hansemark

I decided to go out and look a bit, and found this video from a few days ago by the British Forces Broadcasting Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auzFnAbG0f4

Laura Davis

I really want to hear about Russia's near neighbors in the Eastern Flank. I live very safely away from Russia, but appreciate their significance. Well, I think I do. I can very much learn more. Perun, you are the most bestest person to teach on this matter.

Feldspar

Would absolutely love a video on the history & events leading up to the Russia/Ukraine war that addresses some of the claims made by Putin supporters - The Maidan/Orange revolution, Yanukovic, Crimea etc.

Ian Garrett

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1769663016445042916?t=Y-NveJHNSrlcqxFebkDrvg&s=19

Scheraus

Please forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by "4 Corners" and what needs rebutting?

Ian Garrett

Could you do a rebuttal to 4 Corners

Henry Chang

I want to hear about the drones. Seems like the rise of the drone will change the nature of warfare all over the globe. And yes, it is scary. Some of the videos I've seen are brutal. The soldiers are trying to hide, but the terrain they're on makes it impossible. They're Dead Man Walking. And the drones blow them to pieces.

Teresa Benson

I would love one on war gaming, esp. how to avoid the game designers fixing assumptions that don't reflect real life so that the games end up generating misleading predictions.

Darren

This is kinda covered by the videos about Iraian military strategy, and the red sea crisis. TL;DW: they are backed by state actors who have a strategic interest in arming those groups.

Joe Vandevander

I kind of locked up before picking one almost at random. These are all things I'd like to hear more about!

Iain McClatchie

I'd like to see an analysis of the effects of Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil and refined products output. * How much refinery capacity does Russia actually have? How much has been hit so far? Do we know anything about whether the refineries have actually been damaged enough to take production offline? Is there any information about how long the fixes might take? * Is the amount of crude oil Russia ships changing? Enough to be comparable to other crude oil supply/demand swings (OPEC voluntary cuts, EV demand displacement)? * Russia announced it would cease export of refined products, chiefly diesel. Does refinery capacity worldwide have similarly tight excess supply like crude oil? Whose refineries will have to take up the slack -- Europe? Do they have spare capacity? * How much diesel fuel does Russia have in storage relative to their production rate? Would we expect strikes against refineries to have an affect in weeks, months, or years? * Has there been any observable change in Russian diesel availability? Price increases? Decreased availability of long-haul trucking? Changes in Russia military logistics behavior, like using trains more and trucks less?

Larry Hewitt

More about drones please! Especially interested in the confluence of AI and drones.

Stefanie Butts

How would you be able to do North Korea with how little data is publicly available?

Stefanie Butts

He has been on the show.

William Comars

bailout not withstanding.

William Comars

I voted "no option", but that in no way means that I don't believe all of these subjects aren't worth examining. I just think that the situation regarding NATO is too fluid for an accurate assessment, and will be until after the U.S. election, or at the very least, the resolution of the Ukraine support package. Drone hardware and tactics are changing in real time, I have no doubt that we could get a trenchant analysis, but it would be, be definition, obsolescent, if not obsolete soon after posting. Both countries are very much worth an analysis, but anything on North Korea is, at best, informed speculation, and Pakistan imploding is a "when" not an "if". The recent IMF

Alexis Jouanneaux

@Neil why inertial navigation would be accurate only over short distance? I believe submarines use this kind of thing when they are underwater which is like being jammed 100% of the time right? Also like Perun said, when one uses a jammer it cuts both ways, so maybe both sides don’t want to put a big jammer say in the middle of big cities i guess.

Jeremy _

Maybe just "angle constantly 20 degrees to one direction without accelerating" and thereby draw out a widening arc?

Jeremy _

Yes. Lem's whole thing is how robots would form ecologies or societies without humans.

Jeremy _

I agree it would be interesting but both Hamas and the Houthis are both kinda sorta actually states.

Larry Johnson

I vote you keep doing what you do.... ... .. .

ROGER STEMP

It is always a pleasure and a treat to watch your presentations, Perun. Professional, clear, unbiased and very well researched. You teach me a lot every week. The only difficulty is choosing which subject! Keep up the excellent work.

Tara Summers

Polish, but yes, he is really recommendable. The Invincible (Steam game) is based on his eponymous novel and covers similar topics.

Paul Haynes

An interesting view - but it doesn't match mine at all! I am a pro-EU Brit, but have also spent a great deal of time in Hungary over the last 22 years. So hopefully I have a pretty good feeling for European opinions and motivations - both pro and anti. I've also read more Hungarian history and politics than any Hungarian I know - so, hopefully, I've got a pretty good grasp of that too. But still, it's fascinating to see how differently things can be viewed from the other side of the Atlantic.

Paul Haynes

I would love to see APN as a guest on Perun.

Mike Winter

Would love to see something about how non-state actors are able to obtain relatively very capable weapons systems. i.e. Houthis with ballistic missiles, Hamas being able to obtain rockets and anti air capabilities. I know it is smuggling at it's most basic form but there must be more to it than that. RU video said military export orders can have 2,5, 10 yr lead times to fulfillment but somehow non-state actors seem to be able to get missiles faster than I can buy a shotgun at Walmart (usa here :))

Medici

Re the Baltics, please see Anders Puck Nielsen's video on how it is wrong to assume that Putin can't attack NATO directly and so wouldn't attack at all

Scheraus

Have you considered a very broad assessment of current global instability, including rise of authoritarianism, increased bullying (threats to neighbors), propaganda campaigns, etc?

Scheraus

The main thing I am hoping to see from Perun (as per his usual custom) is a balanced, and un-hyperbolized assessment. There are many reasons why drones are more of an impact in this conflict (at this stage of the conflict) than other conflicts. Other wars may see very different tools being used. Who knew that when this conflict started that some of the most impactful tools would be drones, land mines, and trench-digging equipment.

Scheraus

I agree. While drone evolution fascinates me as an aerospace engineer, I think The Baltic powderkeg (pun intended) could very well be more relevant to future events.

Scheraus

There is also terrain mapping, but I think that is a relatively complex problem, given the possibilities of weather-related and/or deliberate obscuration. A large stationary target such as a bridge, large facility, or ship in drydock, would be relatively simple to target, however, as you noted, any targeting where you are relying on homing on radar signals, visual images, infrared, etc in the final approach, is going to be susceptible to jamming or interference. While Ukraine has shown success lately in targeting Oil Refineries, it has dropped off in results against ground radar systems and counter-battery fire. I have heard various reasons why oil refineries and AWACS aircraft have shown vulnerabilities (eg, oil refineries are not protected by Russian military, but by private companies???) but I would love to hear more Perun's elaboration on those. Another thing to consider is that a major contributor to increased drone usage is the proliferation of COTS drones that are MUCH cheaper than purpose-built military drones. Modifications to systems to counter those threats (ie, increased jamming) involves additional R&D loop that involves software changes (not just attaching a grenade, or adding a thermal sensor). I believe it will happen, but it may take a while to implement AI changes.

Stargazer

The why of Hungary's moves was pretty obvious, even from an armchair general here in the US. Hungary wanted a counter-balance to Germany and France, and Russia was the only near-term game in town, though Poland might be able to in 20-30 years. Since the Eastern Block countries joined the EU, Germany and France have been, successfully and predictably IMHO, pushing the EU to be about their interests above all the other countries and to give them greater political clout and power. In the process they've shortsightedly pushed policies that will destroy many of the other Euro countries, particularly in immigration and trade. This was what forced the UK out, however Brexit also made clear that Germany and France would try to destroy any country that left. So Hungary finds itself in a situation where they're doomed if they stay in the EU and doomed if they try to leave it; the only thing they can do is try to reform it. But for that they need a counter-balance and Russia, the puffer fish that it was, looked like the only option.

qbNone

Loved last Sunday's video. One of my favorites of many. Looking forward to the next one as always.

Cap'n Dan Doherty

The scariest development with drones is the integration of AI on myriad platforms...the hardware is what it is, it's the software that will betray us.

Maddogpilot

N. Korea is not a joke topic. The small bug you ignore on your picnic can suddenly change the tone of that picnic.

Neil Stansbury

As an addendum, altitude you can do super accurately with a calibrated barometer, but how do you “fly in a circle” without a working referential navigation system? What’s the circle in relation to? How do I check I did just move 100m along the circumference, and if not how do I correct that?

Neil Stansbury

Yep, it’s called “Terrain Guidance” something the StormShadow/SCALP missiles apparently use, but now you need good mapping data that needs to be pre-loaded and a powerful processor to do constant image recognition. You’re 100% right It will definitely happen, but there are no free/easy lunches here.

Jeremy _

Makes sense. I guess if I was programming a drone from scratch I'd try something like, "If signal lost for X seconds, fly to XYZ altitude and start spiralling outward until regained" with the idea that it would eventually leave the range of the jammer. But that's just me spitballing. Of course it's probably also the future where drones can just *look around* optically and figure out where they are, no signals or GPS needed. Like, a future drone will just be able to point a camera and say to itself, "Oh hey I recognize that mountain over there."

Kyle E Johnson

Or the Imperium from Warhammer 40k. Though there's so much lore that might be a bit of a task. Perhaps the Tau Empire would be easier for an april fool's joke because it's smaller and less fleshed out in the lore. Or the Klingons from Star Trek

Neil Stansbury

The problem is inertial guidance is ridiculously accurate (and pretty easy) but only over very short distances, so you need secondary or tertiary “big picture” guidance systems like GPS to fuse into your inertial model to keep it on track & accurate. It doesn’t have to be GPS but you can’t use inertial on its own.

Typowy Laman

I know Ukraine is your bread and butter but please, something else and more indepth. Videos where you go deeper into topics is the stuff that's really distinguishing you from other creators.

Neil Stansbury

Has to be drones. it’s easily the single most significant impact to have come out of this conflict, and one every military is closely examining or panicking about (or should be!)

Scott Jacobs

As far as I can tell, both from my own reading of the document and the opinion of people who make their living reading and interpreting such documents, that it was not covered by the treaty/forming documents. Which means that no, there isn't a way to do it.

Scott Jacobs

There are sadly no means - aside from a nation voluntarily leaving NATO - to remove a country from NATO that exist within the NATO charter. Adding such a means would require - IIRC - unanimous consent of all current members, including the one(s) we would like to kick out.

Mathieu Lalonde

I know you mentioned that you were happy that april 1st didn't land on a sunday BUT if you did decide to do an april fool's video how about nation study: the galactic empire from star wars?

Alexis Jouanneaux

Depends if the target moves or not, and if gps signal is jammed then it can’t really continue to the target (the wind can push it off course) without inertial navigation which wouldn’t be so low-end of a drone. I think it’s just hard to jam everything everywhere over countries as big as Ukraine and Russia, especially the latter.

Modestas Pečiokas

Dammit. Baltics are being featured so many times in these polls and always come in second,third :D I want Perun video about Lithuania :D

Jeremy _

Oh and while we're talking about robot weapons: I really recommend Soviet (well, Warsaw Pact) sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem's book "Peace on Earth". All the world's advanced nations develop self-improving robotic weapons that become too dangerous to keep on Earth so they are all placed on the Moon. But then the robots block off all surveillance of the Moon. So one guy gets set to investigate an artificial ecology of humanity's former self-evolving war robots...

Harris

It raises a wider point of how to throw *anyone* out of NATO. What are the current criteria and mechanisms? It doesn't seem like this was much of a consideration when the organisation was formed. Is it covered in the treaty at all, does anyone know?

Jeremy _

I'm kind of surprised that electronic warfare is a big deal for any but the most low-end drones. Isn't it pretty simple to either give a long-range drone instructions ahead of time "Continue to the target, even if signal lost" or "If checksum signal not received every X seconds, go into failsafe and return to base."

Paul Haynes

With reference to another post on here about Hungary, I would love to see something on the hows and whys of Hungary's current situation (they should have learnt by now not to keep picking the wrong side in a war!). Or perhaps this could be broadened out to cover all the NATO (and/or EU) countries that don't seem to fit in with most of the other members of that organisation. Why are they like that? Why, given their different perspectives, did they join? Can they survive as members (and/or) what can the organisation do about them)? And, from a broader perspective, can such organisations function once they have grown to the point where they are having to accept members that ideally they probably wouldn't want?

Arun Lal

Birkas I feel your pain my friend. Sad how the Orbans and Trumps are ruining democracy. And I’m American and am afraid of Trump’s effects.

Paul Haynes

With the hero worship of Orbán and the chaotic state of the opposition, that's not happening any time soon. I'm afraid Hungary has done it yet again - picked the wrong side in a war, and (once again) will live to suffer the consequences.

Birkás Balázs

If you choose Hungary, I could help if translations are needed.

Birkás Balázs

Please, don't! I understand we'd deserve it, but please just restrict our rights until we defenestrate Fidesz.

Alexis Jouanneaux

I love what you do!!!

Arun Lal

How about a ppt on possible ways to throw Hungary out of NATO?

Matthias Kraft

What I would like to see is an episode that at analyzes the effectiveness of "Western" sanctions. Particularly on Russia, but also on other states like Iran and North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela etc.

Guy Dudley

Drones will be interesting. I'm wondering whether an aircraft carrier will able to get within strike range of an adversary nation without becoming a massive magnet for naval drones.

Harris

I just wanted to throw an idea in the ring, for what it's worth - civilian weaponisation and surviveability. I have a friend who's from Bucha, and quite apart from the nightmarish stories of day-to-day living she had to tell I was struck by her view that this was not just a few soldiers going rogue, this was meticulously planned. 'They had lists' she said - lists of where the rich people lived, where the pretty girls and women lived, and, most chillingly perhaps, where the children lived. These lists were compiled largely from social media but also from hacked government records. So if civilian populations are becoming/have become weaponised, what's the defence economist's standard analysis of strategic efficacy, cost-benefit ratios, counter strategies, so on and so forth? It's a subject which is rarely addressed in depth in its own right outside the 'ain't it awful' (which it decidedly is) news cycle. Not just potentially interesting in its own right as an episode but also maybe we end up with some ideas to work with personally should we ever, God forbid, find ourselves in that situation.

Hanno Jaan Niidas

Agreed. War gaming is a fascinating subject. I'd like to know 2 things, of which 1 is important. The first - can some form of war gaming avoid the kind of procurement cock-ups like that of the LCS and Zumwalt class destroyers you shared with us ? My intuitive feeling is that for littoral combat small, single-purpose warships might be a better idea. The second - to what extent are various public MMP strategic war games realistic ? I can see them being limited by computing power (I'm not a gamer, mind). I can also see that the huge population of players might introduce more randomness into the game. I recall reading years ago that an adolescent using a simulator found a way to land the space shuttle safely using only vacuum thrusters to deorbit, and that this was later adapted as part of emergency SOPs by NASA.

Fafhrd 002

In 90s i used to occasionally join a "mega game" which involved 100+ random gamers in a hall playing out various scenarios from scifi thru italian 14c politics. Great fun and uk DoD were interested in how we differed from their techniques even offering us location facilities.

Robert Jarman

How about something related to how autocratic regimes and democratic regimes work differently in terms of war support. Putin got 88% of the vote, supposedly, this week, Zelenskyy got over 70% but we believe Zelenskyy's support was genuinely that high back then in the runoff.

Cesar E. Lopez El ll

can the eastern flank be a 2 or 3 parter as the Scandian countries, and Baltics and then Poland to Bulgaria

Dragos Stoica

That NATO Eastern Flank better include Romania and Bulgaria. You had a similar topic that I hope we get to see, former Warsaw Pact NATO countries.

David Glickman4

I would DEFINITELY watch that!

Geoff Tuffli

Glad to hear this. It gets talked around a lot, but for those of us outside that world, how exactly it is done would be intriguing.

Katana Del Nacht

@Perun, could you touch on how militaries have historically prepared for the last major war and the reaction time before innovations are recognized as real military advantages?Advances stand out to me such as air power/the aircraft carrier in WWII, drones in the current conflict, long bows for the British in the middle ages, sharp bills for the emu, and others?

MarakEvans

Ghost Recon: Wildlands has a few types of drones that can be very scary irl. Not sure if it's too redundant, topic-wise.

Katana Del Nacht

The defense economics of the Empire or Mordor–or whatever semi-popular fictional world happens to strike your fancy–would be a hilarious release on April 1st.

Deviant

My votes went to North Korea and the drones, turned out I picked both the most and least popular options 😂

David Childs

Given your prediliction for OSINT and listing sources, I fear DPRK could be a very short video :(

Brendan Waugh

What about a nation study on Argentina and their millitary - or rather their lack of a millitary?

Andrew Kennedy

I wish you had the bandwidth to do a BEST Korea analysis just for 1Apr.

Windsurfing Nelson

I'm losing every time!😪 (but I'm alright because Perun has an ace up his sleeve always😁🤙. Thanks!)

M. T. Seven

I'd like to second this.

Perun

Maybe as a compromise for the release close to April 1st - not a joke topic, but weird enough to count?

Perun

I have plans around a war-gaming episode, but they are particularly ambitious and I want to engage certain people as part of it. If it comes together it'll be some time yet