Ukraine ATACMS Obliterate Major Russian Crimea Air Base, Command Center

Two waves of Ukrainian ATACMS missiles inflicted serious damage on one of Russia's most important military airfields at Dzanskoi, Crimea. 

There is reported to be significant destruction as well as many dead and wounded Russian personnel. JL 

Stefan Korshak reports in the Kyiv Post:

Massive explosions hit the Russian Dzhankoi military airfield in occupied Crimea early Wednesday. (It) is home to a significant military aviation infrastructure and close to 50 combat aircraft. Ballistic missiles targeted military equipment, pilots, bombers and attack helicopters. Combat units stationed at the Dzhankoi base include the 27th Combined Helicopter Regiment, the 39th Helicopter Regiment, Air Defense Command for Joint Forces South, and a logistics center storing Zircon hypersonic missiles. An initial wave of missiles with cluster munitions destroyed aircraft and caused casualties. A second wave with high explosive warheads targeted fuel reserves and ammunition storage. 30 Russian service personnel died and more than 80 were injured

The Multiple Reasons Why Ukraine Can Beat Russia

This past weekend's obliteration of Iran's attempt to attack Israel was a further demonstration of the superiority of western weapons versus those of the Russian-Iranian-Chinese alliance. 

And among the most skillful deployers of those western weapons have been Ukrainian soldiers. If the west can overcome its irrational, crippling fear of Russian escalation, Russia will be beaten. JL 

Mykola Bieleiskov reports in The Atlantic Council:

The West’s preoccupation with avoiding escalation at all costs goes against basic military doctrine and has been instrumental in preventing greater Ukrainian battlefield success. By allowing themselves to be intimidated by the threat of Russian escalation the West has prolonged the war in Ukraine, allowing Russia to overcome initial setbacks and regain the initiative. It has prevented the Ukrainian military from building on the momentum of late 2022, and has turned a dynamic war of movement into an attritional fight. Policymakers in Europe and the US must decide whether they wish to continue with this losing strategy which will be seen as the biggest geopolitical blunder since the appeasement of the 1930s.

Russian Casualties In War's 2nd Year Are 25 Percent Higher Than In 1st

Meatgrinder tactics yield meatgrinder results, not that the Kremlin seems to care. JL 

Olga Ivshina and colleagues report in the BBC:

In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy - we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year. The term meat grinder has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery. The overall death toll - of more than 50,000 - is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022. This does not include the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk - in eastern Ukraine. Russia's experienced soldiers are now dead or wounded, and have been replaced by people with little training or military experience. These people can't do what professional soldiers can do

Ukraine's International Legions Continue Fierce Battle Vs Russians

Ukraine's legions of international volunteers garnered much attention early in the war, but attrition, drones and strategic issues have dominated the news more recently. 

But those soldiers from the US, UK, Poland, Brazil, India, Colombia and numerous other nations continue to battle the Russians effectively despite hardships - and wherever they are needed. JL 

Tyler Hicks reports in the New York Times:

There are many reasons a foreigner might enlist to fight a war that has nothing to do with him. One is money. The open-ended contracts in Ukraine pay, on average, about $2,500 a month, a tempting sum for some of the men who came there from countries with few good economic opportunities for them. But some fighters at the post in the woods for the 2nd International Legion, created after Russia invaded in February 2022, were looking for something more. During the day, fighting flares every three or four hours, generally lasting an hour. At night came the bombs. "This is my family now."

Russia Losing 70 Percent Of Armor In Chasiv Yar Assaults Amid Ukraine's Stand

Ukraine's increasingly strong defensive stand at Chasiv Yar is costing Russian forces as much as 70% of their armor and equipment in each assault, once again degrading Russian capabilities that limit their options everywhere along the front. 

Chasiv Yar is a strategic site so the battle there will be fierce. JL 

Yuri Zoria reports in Euromaidan Press:

During their ongoing assault on the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces are losing 50 to 70% of their military equipment. Russian forces are concentrating their efforts west of Bakhmut to capture the town by 9 May, Russia's WWII victory day. Despite facing ammunition shortages, Ukrainian forces are effectively holding their positions in the Chasiv Yar area, where the enemy has made no tactical gains in the past 24 hours. Chasiv Yar is strategically important.

Gen AI Investment Octupled Amid Overall AI Decline Due Training, Data Costs

Amid an overall decline in AI venture funding, Gen AI investment octupled. The implication may be that corporate users perceive more immediate productivity and financial benefits from Gen AI while AI generally faces growing consumer and government concern. 

Notable among these trends is that tech industry development of new LLM models now far surpasses that from academia and that the US is far ahead of China as AI continues to surpass human performance on a number of important benchmarks. JL 

Michael Nunez reports in Venture Beat:

While private AI investment declined for a second year, funding for “generative AI” octupled to $25.2 billion. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic closed massive funding rounds. Private companies produced 51 notable machine learning models last year, compared to only 15 from academia as AI surpassed human performance on several benchmarks, yet trails on more complex tasks like competition-level mathematics, visual commonsense reasoning, and planning.”  Costs to train cutting-edge AI systems skyrocketed (as) the training costs of state-of-the-art AI models reached unprecedented levels. (And) “robust standardized evaluations for LLM are  lacking, which complicates efforts to systematically compare the risks and limitations of top AI models.”

Ukraine Drone Operators' Skill, Precision and Lethality Have Increased Exponentially

Flying around anti-drone cages and into open hatches has become something of a battle honor for increasingly skilled drone pilots. JL 

Chris Panella reports in Business Insider:

Operators on both sides are flying unmanned aerial vehicles with astonishing precision and lethality, destroying everything from individual soldiers to expensive, high-value targets like top tanks. In one (recent example), the drone flies towards the tank, navigates carefully through what appears to be a cage built on top of it and down into the tank's open hatch before exploding and, apparently, setting off the ammo inside. Drone operators have become invaluable assets, as well as prime targets. Operators have been documented using their drones to target each other, hoping to take out their enemy's capabilities for flying the UAVs that have complicated battlefield maneuver and combat operations.