The Unblinking Eye of War
Of all the weapons deployed on the battlefield there is one that is often overlooked, even though its use is widespread. We don't see it because we're looking through it.
Some may not consider cameras as weapons per se, but the war in Ukraine is showing that it is indeed a weapon, just not of the hard power kind. Hard power coerces; soft power persuades. We are in a global mind war, after all.
Never before has the public had access to daily war footage from body cams and drone cams; this is the first real war to occur in the smart phone hyperconnected era. This unprecedented access is part of the military operation itself. The footage is selected ('the greatest hits' if you will), the dead are blurred (but not completely) and the rest is raw (in every sense of the word).
It is as real as it gets. No movie or video game, but real people at the very limit between life and death. Knowing that they are soldiers doing their job does little to blunt the brutal finality of it all.
We follow kamikaze drones hitting their targets and watch hardware getting blown away from overhead views of the terrain. We move with the soldiers in harrowing urban combat through their helmet cams. We watch the big guns shooting their load, and then what happens when they hit their targets. We see entire cities reduced to rubble. Night and day, we witness the hell of war.
It is the Rus side that is exploiting this soft power weapon the most, by far. History is rhyming again, but with a twist. Where once soviet propaganda was just about the most ham-handed tripe imaginable, now western propaganda is the tripe, while the new Rus approach is to show the footage, give the numbers and let the public reach its own conclusions. Oh how the tables turn...
The main goal is to boost the morale of their own side and demoralize the adversary. It would be fair to assume the Uke troops and nato mercenaries are already pretty demoralized by the progress of the war, the ones that are still alive at least. The daily drip of cam war footage is to help everyone else with eyes to see to understand why.
The footage also casts shade on the mental capacity of nato command. It doesn't take a military expert to understand that deployment of heavy weapons in open field without effective air support is an invitation for the other side to sit back and pinpoint bomb the living shit out of everything until the cows come home... which they won't as long as there's anything left to blow up. Cows have a better grasp of strategy than nato commanders.
Then there are the doubts about the effectiveness of the nato 'big guns'. The constant drip of footage showing tanks and other armored vehicles being destroyed by single cheap drones and shells is casting a shroud of uncertainty over nato's aura of military superiority. The optics are so bad they can't be spun, just studiously ignored. Nato states are disconcerted to say the least, although none dare admit it.
Bottom line, the impact of the war cam hits the enemy in the soft parts. One, it serves up daily footage to contrast with the official western narrative and feeds a growing number of critic voices who are tired of seeing their countries give Ukraine a blank check. Especially since the footage of nato tanks getting smoked forced lamestream media to tell a smidgen of truth about what's really happening in Ukraine.
Two, it makes nato look weak, which is bad for business. If one were out shopping for weapons of war, the Rus war footage would be a good guide of where the value's at. German tank, 10 million bucks. Persian kamikaze drone that destroyed it, 10 grand at most. A thousand drones for the price of a single tank, priceless.
Finally, it gives people the opportunity to see war as it is. A mere glimpse, thank god, but more than enough to feel the despair of senseless death and destruction brought about by the madness of those yet in power. That's why Normieville won't get to see the unblinking eye of war until it is looking at them.
Dispatch out.