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Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


So I sat down and this unintentionally swelled from a couple paragraphs to a midsize essay over the course of a few hours, but its done now and as a result you all get to see it.

Iran and US relations post war

HW Bush

Iran US relations are a bit of a mess just constantly. One of the big pushing factors to Iran-Contra was in part a desire to build relations with Iran in order to get them to make Hezbollah release the hostages they had been taking like candy in Lebanon. (Along with the desire to generate off the books cash to arm the Contras). This was the apex of the utter clown parade that was US attempts to talk with Iran during the war itself, with Iran and the US and Israel all being taken to the cleaners by a conman claiming to have contacts with the US government and moderate elements of the Iranian government for weapons. Just after the end of Iran-Iraq, HW got a call from Tehran from a man claiming to be Rafsanjani (The president of the time). Who said, they wanted to improve relations in return for releasing US hostages in Lebanon held by Hezbollah. It came to light later after he asked the CIA to check, that it was a political opponent of Rafsanjani who was trying to embarass him by having him implicated with the US. Trying to normalise relations had the added hurdle of not even being able to find the right person to talk to. The concept of just essentially some guy being able to ring up the president of the USA and pretend to be the president of Iran is utterly boggling.

Clinton

Both sides have at various times since then attempted to bridge the gap, but utter farce or internal politics got in the way on both sides. Rafsanjani was actually interested in rapprochement and had the hostages released in 1992 along with the bodies of the two that Hezbollah had murdered, however the US didn’t reciprocate in letting Iran back into the international community. While this was going on there were more murders of Iranian exiles and an attempt to start an uprising in Iraq after Gulf 1, which the hawk elements of the US government took as an excuse to renege after the hostages were home. Rafsanjanis political opponents would take that as an excuse to harden their own stance and stepped up their support for Hamas and Hezbollah and was aggressively trying to derail the Arab-Israeli peace process at the time. (A time when it looked anything other than vanishingly unlikely). Iran for their part saw what happened to Iraq, saw the increased permanent US deployments in the gulf and the continued sanctions against them as proof of US duplicity. This was in danger of low key starting a war in the mid 90's. A US military exercise set the Iranians on edge as they saw it as a precursor to them invading the islands they controlled in the Persian gulf, and they started threatening the gulf with a build-up on their positions on the central islands of Abu Musa and Abu Tunb (and others), this was not an idle threat of their ability to really badly gently caress with world oil supplies which they had shown a willingness to do before.

Here we get Rafsanjani really trying to make peace with the US and just cool everyone off, they gave a huge oil contract to a US company to develop an offshore oil field, the government and the CIA pushed for this to happen as they really wanted to try and break the ice. But then the republicans won Congress and the Israeli lobby and those who just plain hated Bill Clinton and they put up even harsher economic sanctions. This is the point that Newt Gingrich really starts yelling about overthrowing Iran. He pushed through a very public 18 million dollars for the CIA's budget for Iranian operations. This would accomplish bugger all, you can’t run a spy ring in a coffee shop for 18 million. It completely tanked any chance of the CIA really developing any meaningful Iranian intelligence network (Which they had lost in its entirety 6 years prior). What the CIA actually did was stuff like smuggling books into Iran. The one thing this really achieved was in convincing Iran that America was essentially declaring full scale covert war against them, so Iran countered by actually declaring covert war. They attempted to start a riot in Bahrain and then blew up Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, a building that housed a bunch of USAF personnel of whom they killed 20 and injured a further 400. The revolutionary guard navy harassed boats in the gulf leading to concerns about suicide boat attacks.

At this point however as the US is genuinely considering bombing Iran in retaliation a new president took over from Rafsanjani. President Khatami stopped the Rev. Guards from killing dissidents in other nations, had the leader of the intelligence services sacked for conducting these operations without notifying the supreme leader. He started making all sorts of noises about condemning terrorism, not killing Salman Rushdie and apologising for the US embassy siege as well as restraining the revolutionary guards from messing with people in the gulf. Clinton reciprocates by making noises about apologising for US actions in the past, not quite going as far as to do so but certainly moving in that direction and eased some restrictions on Iran. However Khatami couldn’t get the Iranian government to move forward to respond to US overtures. Clinton made a significant effort to meet Khatami when both were scheduled to speak at the UN before he left office, however Khatami who lacked the Supreme Leaders authorization to conduct talks slid out a side door to avoid him.

GW Bush

Then we get Dubya entering office. The state department and the joint chiefs of staff both pushed for continuing Clintons attempts to connect with Iran. However, they were obsessed with Iraq and just didn’t care all that much about Iran by comparison. The only person who cared and took an active interest in what to do with Iran was John Bolton, and I hardly need to articulate what his views were, but nobody cared enough to support his views to Dubya. Iran during this are hoping that they might be able to get on Dubyas good side by his links to oil industries in the US. They probably correctly divined that pressure from corporate interests could make Dubya take an interest in them.

Then we get 9/11.

Iran had been fighting the Taliban for quite some time and after 9/11 they seize the moment and invite the US in for talks, for the first time since 1986. Its been 15 years since the two countries have been able to even be in the same room together (The Germans and Italians are nominally there so it doesn’t look like it’s just the Iranians but their delegations tended to take very long lunches, like 5 hours long). It took some wrangling but the US agrees over the objections of Bolton, Wolfowitz and Luti (the assistant secretary of defence for near eastern affairs, who had served as Gingriches military aid before entering the administration). Iran gives the US significant intelligence about where the Taliban are in Afghanistan and are really pushing commonalities, the US are a bit leery but take their information and it develops into regular talks.

However at this point the Israelis intercept a shipment of weapons to Palestine from Iran, it seems unlikely this was an official government action but it still puts a bit of a spanner in the works. Then we get possibly the most ill-considered speech, the Axis of Evil speech. Which is notable because it didn’t come out of US government policy on Iran, because the US government had no policy on Iran at all, it was a lyrical flourish. This really hacks off Iran who withdraw from the talks, release a major Taliban commander and start undermining the government the US is trying to install in Afghanistan.

Then the US really decides to bollock everything up. Iran is interested in cooperating on Iraq, they want a say in selecting the new form of governance for that nation. Some effort is made on that front by both Iran and elements of the US government, but they get told to get stuffed and shut them out of Iraq entirely. So, Iran decided to be difficult, they were utterly convinced that the US was going to come and overthrow them, the lack of a clear US policy had reinforced this worry that had festered for 20 years, they took precisely the approach they had taken in Lebanon. They sought to create as much of a pig’s ear of a situation that the US would be too busy dealing with that to threaten them. And eventually they would come out on top. They would send thousands of fighters into Iraq to just get ready to create a mess due to the disintegration of the border, and it worked very well.

Both sides attempted via gestures to get the other to open up, the US sent significant aid to Iran after an earthquake hit a city, Iran sent a message via Switzerland which contained a plausible solution to normalising relations. Unfortunately, it was taken as a hoax and ignored because they had no easy way to validate its provenance, it turns out to have been from the highest level of Iranian government, so nothing came of either effort.

The US would move to supporting pro liberalising elements in Iran. Liberalising in this context meaning freedom of speech, human rights (as we in the west would understand them), labour rights, dismantling of the Revolutionary Guard’s chokehold over much of the economy, and freedom within the political process to choose who is on the ballot. Iran would react rather poorly to this, viewing it largely correctly as an attempt to overthrow them using soft power. That was not the only reason the US were attempting this but it was a major part of it.

At the end of all this muddled process in 2006 we get the Iran nuclear deal, or the start thereof. This was a major push from Condoleezza Rice, who took the view that you needed to engage with Iran to try and get them to cooperate. Because she was so close to Bush she circumvented all the Neo-Cons who gatekept the president, particularly Cheney and Rumsfeld at this point. She managed to get approval for using China and Russia to reach an agreement with Iran. It was offered to Iran that in return for halting their nuclear program they would get aid from Europe to modernise their oil and gas industry, they would get a light water reactor for nuclear power generation and a gradual reduction of sanctions. This was backed by Iran’s friends in Russia and the PRC as well. They prevaricated and were accused of stalling by the US which got their backs up and they eventually rejected it. They were probably going to reject it even without that particular wrinkle.

So that really brings us to the current state of sanctions on Iran, they were found in contravention of nuclear proliferation by the IAEA and there were significant international pushes for sanctions and inspection of cargo to stop Iran achieving nuclear weapons. This failure essentially kicks off Iran really escalating their activities, supplying Iraqi militias aggressively and paying them to attack US forces, we have reached the state of pretty much undeclared war that would rage for years.

Obama

Obama then turned up and he is explicit about using diplomacy to engage with Iran. He goes on Arab TV and talked this up for the middle-east at large. This was received very positively in much of Iran, but their own hardliners torpedoed every attempt of the moderate elements in Iran to actually do something about it. Not getting anywhere he would however try again, writing directly to Supreme Leader Khameini on two occasions and getting polite but non-committal replies. Unfortunately, then Ahmadinejad would get re-elected in Iran in 2009. He was one of only 4 candidates approved by the Religious Guardian Council to stand (of 476 applicants). There was pretty much certainly fraud in that election but its impossible to prove, he won by huge margins in every province bar two, even ones that he had lost in 2005. This sparks massive protests, after some indulgence from the Supreme Leader they eventually get told to stop but don’t, the Basijj militia go out attacking protesters and the police shoot a fair few, including the nephew of the second place candidate Mousavi. Iran blames the west for this, expels a number of British diplomats and all western journalists. There has been no reliable evidence that was the case. However, this set back relations further and the protests would continue but to no ultimate effect.

After about a year in 2010, the US would try again, they exposed a secret Iranian enrichment reactor and threatened further sanctions. They presented a deal for Iran to send its uranium to Russia, who would refine it into fuel grade uranium for their power reactors. This actually seemed to be getting somewhere, as Iran accepted the deal in principle and Ahmadinejad was in favour of it publically. Unfortunately, Irans internal politics derailed it, the Supreme leader didn’t particularly like Ahmadinejad or the West, his own political opponents in the government were determined to derail it to embarrass the president. Iran could not get a political consensus to agree to it themselves and so they rejected it and continued enriching uranium. As a result they got hit with the really big sanctions stick by the UN, we also get Stuxnet at this point which buggers about a third of Iran’s enrichment centrifuges. Israel, while probably not acting in concert with the US on this though its no way to be sure funds Sunni terrorists in Iran who conduct a series of bombings against the revolutionary guard, killing north of 50 of their officers, including a major general and dozens of civillians. There were also several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists almost certainly conducted by Mossad. To explain why that’s important when we are discussing the US, the view of the hardliners in Iran is that of a global Zionist conspiracy which ties Israeli and US actions together. This really boosted Iran’s paranoia, though whether it was paranoia when there were people out to get them is of course an open question.

Iran then steps up its activities in the gulf, again, and start bombing campaigns in Iraq in an attempt to mess with the US attempts at withdrawal, killing at least 15 American soldiers, the US bombs Iranian backed militias in Iraq and warns Iran very strongly through Russia, Iranian boats charged a US task group openly threatening to blow them up and dropping fake mines in the water ahead of them. The commander had not been in the gulf that long and didn’t realise that it was the Revolutionary guard up to their usual tricks. Fortunately, when he asked permission to open fire he was told not to and we managed to avoid a shooting war starting right then and there. They did something similar to a British ship who fired warning shots at the revolutionary guard who fortunately thought better of their activities and left.

This behaviour continues with another round of sanctions over the nuclear enrichment program resolution in the UN in 2012 which shut the Iranian central bank out of much of the world’s financial system, followed by the EU implementing the same sanctions. Iran responded by threatening to close the states of Hormuz. These sanctions are really started to hurt Iran at this stage. It was at this stage that Obama goes into his second term and manages to thrash out the deal that would eventually be signed.

Conclusions

This is essentially the very very short version of Iranian relations with the US since 1989. I hope it has illuminated why making a deal with Iran is quite so drat difficult. They are a completely fractured nation with an uneasy balance of power between moderates and radicals. There is only really one person who can actually impart order, and that is the Supreme Leader Khameini. The supreme religious lot in charge are all really loving old, they have been there for decades and have seen everything come to nought and still in my view cling to this idea of Iranian regional hegemon as a greater Shia state that Khomeini explicitly stated was the goal of the Islamic revolution back in 1979.

The second is that Iran is pretty much as to blame for this as the US is, precisely how much is open to personal interpretation, there is no denying the huge scale of the damage that Dubyas administration did to ever finding an actual solution. But Iran has nobody but itself to blame for the fact that nobody likes them given their constant and repeated actions. It’s a revolutionary state that never learned to stop fighting, and really its been fighting for nigh on 40 years now. The Axis of Evil speech was poorly judged and deeply bloody unhelpful in terms of international diplomacy, but it really wasn’t inaccurate given Iran’s creation and support of two of the nastier international terrorist groups of recent years.

Iran and America now just fundamentally cannot trust each other, Iranian overtures historically have largely been met by either disbelief or a demand for complete capitulation by the US. And US overtures have been met with either silence or another campaign of bombings by Iran. The fact that the Obama deal got signed at all is an absolute miracle given the legacy of distrust that it had to overcome. Hardliners on both sides want war, its very difficult for them not to get it at this stage.

I’m avoiding discussion of the recent abrogation by Trump because dear god I don’t really wanna poke that beehive of modern political clownery, also my knowledge on the subject is much more limited.

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

It's a lot like "gig-economy" stuff. Google is basically acting as the employer that pays people for the creation of content that keeps people watching youtube (although it doesn't help that Youtube doesn't have much competition). Youtube loads up its demonetization algorithm with a bunch of words, leaves no visible human oversight or any clear avenues to contact real humans, and gives big companies access to easy tools to flag videos for taking their ad revenues, also with very little if any judicial review. Google's main strategy for escaping culpability for its actions is to hide access to any humans.

Like it's fairly reasonable that advertisers want to be more discerning about where they want to advertise, but youtube purposely obfuscates the whole process and refuses to act on a lot of genuine problems.

Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


Nebakenezzer posted:

I have two questions for you.

First, was trench warfare in the Iran-Iraq war as First World War Miserable as I picture anytime I hear the term? Obviously everybody has radios and tanks, but I'm still picturing the Iranians trudging across no-man's land straight into the teeth of prepared defenses.

Second, have you heard of the Arrow Air Crash? In December 1985 the worst aircrash in Canadian and USAF history happened in my hometown. The victems (aside from the aircrew and two secret squirrel types) were men of the 101st airborne, who'd been in Sinai on a peacekeeping mission. The resulting total lack of curiosity by America as to what happened and a completely incompetent/ordered to produce a result crash investigation made people suspect a cover up...which was mos def warranted. The Arrow charter company was a CIA front out of Florida, who were frequently used in Iran-Contra arms deliveries. In fact, it's likely that the aircraft took on a load of Iran-bound ordnance - likely missiles - while on a stopover in Cairo. Anyway, sabotage of a CIA charter carrying American soldiers home for Christmas does sound like something the Revolutionary Guard would do on their own.

Pretty much, Iran especially will engage in human wave attacks of a scale not really seen outside of WW1, at least not commonly. To draw a quote from i think the first post i did on this.

quote:

“They come on in their hundreds, often walking straight across the minefields, triggering them with their feet … They chant Allahu Akbar and they keep coming, and we keep shooting, sweeping our fifty mills [sic] [machine guns] around like sickles. My men are eighteen, nineteen, just a few years older than these kids. I’ve seen them crying, and at times, the officers have to kick them back to their guns. Once we had Iranian kids on bikes cycling towards us, and my men started laughing, and then these kids started lobbing their hand grenades, and we stopped laughing and starting firing”

From an Iraqi officer who was on the front lines near Basra.

Theres lots of accounts like this, its not something that all of Iran is neccesarily on board with, particularly the regular army views this as wasteful and inneficient in internal debates on the matter, but it is the definitive feature of much of Irans tactics with its Revolutionary guards militias. These are people with a few weeks training, fanaticised largely by religious fervour and patriotism who are throwing themselves in to die. It is not applied completely artlessly, they will use light infantry to infiltrate iraqi lines and attack in more intelligent ways but there are definitely significant and frequent moments of just sending in the next wave. Theres an offensive in 1987 where they will suffer 120'000 casualties in four rdays of fighting. For context the battle of the Somme caused Britain 60'000 casualties in one day.

On the defensive its again very reminiscent of the misery of WW1, except their country couldnt afford, or didnt want to afford, take your pick, to supply them with appropriate gas masks when the Iraqis come so you get massive casualties and then panic when Iraq rolls in with tanks that they dont have the equipment to fight effectively.

As far as i am aware the only evidence of the Arrow air crash being anything other than bad luck was a Shia group claiming responsibility for it at the time. I think that were there any evidence of that being the case it would have come to light by now. Its certianly something that the IRGC might do if they had the chance, but i dont really see how they would have done.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

fishmech posted:

It's really kinda weird that people just assume that "monetization" is something owed to them in substantial amounts just for making videos, so long as those videos are online. You only get that monetization through YouTube if you're doing things that companies with big advertising budgets like, just like commercial TV. (of course you can get penny shavings instead for a much broader range of content, but that doesn't pay for a full time video production career).

Only unlike TV, people will watch what amounts to the modern public access channels plenty. And depending on who likes you enough you can potentially break into a premium-TV equivalent space where the money's coming from at least some part of the audience directly paying on a regular basis.

The problem with demonetisation is not that the money is gone, it is that the videos stop showing up in peoples recommendations.
The video that started this discussion literally talks about that.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

One less B-17 in the world.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766403309/wwii-aircraft-crashes-at-connecticut-airport

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Polyakov posted:

As far as i am aware the only evidence of the Arrow air crash being anything other than bad luck was a Shia group claiming responsibility for it at the time. I think that were there any evidence of that being the case it would have come to light by now. Its certianly something that the IRGC might do if they had the chance, but i dont really see how they would have done.

Somebody did take responsibility, I'll look it up after work.

As for evidence, unlike the US where the FAA keeps the aircraft wreckage forever, it was policy at the time with CASB to destroy wreckage once the "investigation" was done. It was wasn't policy, but they also removed the top six inches of topsoil where the wreck was. There's eyewitness testimony consistent with sabotage/an explosion, but eyewitnesses are not super reliable, though I guess if you believe them, you are onboard with the sabotage theory. There was a lot of work done discrediting the offical conclusion: basically the only thing the investigation managed to prove was that its conclusion was wrong. This was later vindicated by a second investigation by a Supreme Court Justice, who also said there was not enough hard evidence to justify the minority finding of sabotage. That supreme court justice also has his house searched by the RCMP for reasons that are now sealed until everybody ITT is dead.

There's also the bizarre behavior of American authorities, who for some reason were ordered to do nothing in the investigation (like the behavior of the explosive experts) when the Lockerbie bombing a few years later saw the FBI all over that poo poo, even though the UK at the time had Scotland Yard and quite a few years in bomb investigation. The noise kicked up by the relations of the dead in the crash actually got a senate investigation, where the Senate opened, dunked on Canada for its terrible crash investigation, and then after lunch closed the investigation. So, there were lots of people who were very industrious in not looking for evidence.

Best actual evidence: the Doctor who did the autopsies at the US airbase where the remains ended up [Dover? Same place the Challenger astronaut bodies were taken to] testified in the inquiry that people in the front fourth of the aircraft aspirated toxic gas consistent with an onboard fire. This fire apparently originated in the cockpit, as both the pilot and copilot had already absorbed lethal amounts of this gas by the time the airliner hit the ground in its flight of less than a minute. We might have learned more, but after this the doctor was apparently forbidden from testifying further.

e: I hope you don't mind me yammering on about this, but it occurred to me a short time ago learning about Iran-Contra etc might be helpful in maybe finding better evidence to support my theory that Reagan heard about the accident, panicked, and asked his BFF PM Mulroney to cover it up

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Oct 2, 2019

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

VictualSquid posted:

The problem with demonetisation is not that the money is gone, it is that the videos stop showing up in peoples recommendations.
The video that started this discussion literally talks about that.

This is because the entire thing is funded by advertising. It's a fundamental aspect of the entire business.

Like I said, you can do pretty much whatever you want in the public access type space - but public access gets basically no push outside of what the creator does. While the big mass market stuff gets all the push because it makes money.


Compare History Channel doing 5000 ~Amazing Wunderwaffe~ episodes to maybe one or two serious docs on the 30 Years War in the time it's been running and surely they didn't push that very hard.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

fishmech posted:

Compare History Channel doing 5000 ~Amazing Wunderwaffe~ episodes to maybe one or two serious docs on the 30 Years War in the time it's been running and surely they didn't push that very hard.
were you just looking around for something niche and settled on that war as an example or are you thinking of real things? because i am not familiar with any english language documentaries on my subjects

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

HEY GUNS posted:

were you just looking around for something niche and settled on that war as an example or are you thinking of real things? because i am not familiar with any english language documentaries on my subjects

I vaguely recall having watched part of a series that had a Thirty Years War episode or two in it in the 2000s, and it not exactly being thorough. But yeah the fact that it's barely even a thing is most of what I'm going for, especially in proportion to the history the channel does choose to show. :v:

Might have been part of a series on Christianity's history?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

fishmech posted:

I vaguely recall having watched part of a series that had a Thirty Years War episode or two in it in the 2000s, and it not exactly being thorough. But yeah the fact that it's barely even a thing is most of what I'm going for, especially in proportion to the history the channel does choose to show. :v:

Might have been part of a series on Christianity's history?

that's too bad, i was hoping you were talking about a real thing so i could watch it

Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


Nebakenezzer posted:

e: I hope you don't mind me yammering on about this, but it occurred to me a short time ago learning about Iran-Contra etc might be helpful in maybe finding better evidence to support my theory that Reagan heard about the accident, panicked, and asked his BFF PM Mulroney to cover it up

I don't mind, I will be getting on to Iran contra because we are about to hit it chronologically and that and all the stories about where they got their arms from is quite interesting in of itself. But I haven't encountered anything that would suggest it.

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

HEY GUNS posted:

that's too bad, i was hoping you were talking about a real thing so i could watch it

I just googled "History Channel" 30 Years War and got this article on their website which lists 3 sources: 1 book, an entry in the Catholic encyclopedia, and an Economist article. I assume that's the same amount of research that goes into their documentaries.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Squalid posted:

I just googled "History Channel" 30 Years War and got this article on their website which lists 3 sources: 1 book, an entry in the Catholic encyclopedia, and an Economist article. I assume that's the same amount of research that goes into their documentaries.
pretty sure the painting in the back is from the war that the regiment in my dissertation fought in, which isn't even the main Thirty Years War! now i'm mad

Schadenboner
Aug 15, 2011

by Shine

HEY GUNS posted:

pretty sure the painting in the back is from the war that the regiment in my dissertation fought in, which isn't even the main Thirty Years War! now i'm mad

Hey Guns sighed as he unsheathed his zweihander...

sullat
Jan 9, 2012
So I was wandering around town the other day, and there were like 20 guys (and gals, its the 21st century) wearing green & black woodland camo uniforms. I figured they were army, but to my surprise, their uniforms said "US Navy". What's up with that? I thought one of the perqs of being a sailor was that you could dress kind of snappy and not have to wear camo, especially when in the grim hellscape of a modern office building.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



sullat posted:

So I was wandering around town the other day, and there were like 20 guys (and gals, its the 21st century) wearing green & black woodland camo uniforms. I figured they were army, but to my surprise, their uniforms said "US Navy". What's up with that? I thought one of the perqs of being a sailor was that you could dress kind of snappy and not have to wear camo, especially when in the grim hellscape of a modern office building.
Someone has to secure the tall oaks for the mainmasts.

FAUXTON
Jun 2, 2005

spero che tu stia bene

sullat posted:

So I was wandering around town the other day, and there were like 20 guys (and gals, its the 21st century) wearing green & black woodland camo uniforms. I figured they were army, but to my surprise, their uniforms said "US Navy". What's up with that? I thought one of the perqs of being a sailor was that you could dress kind of snappy and not have to wear camo, especially when in the grim hellscape of a modern office building.

that's what they give to sailors who sail the land

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB


FAUXTON posted:

that's what they give to sailors who sail the land

It’s across the board as of 01 OCTOBER.


It’s bullshit. I don’t want to look like a fat soldier or marine.

TK-42-1
Oct 30, 2013

looks like we have a bad transmitter



LingcodKilla posted:

It’s across the board as of 01 OCTOBER.


It’s bullshit. I don’t want to look like a fat soldier or marine.

i don’t think it’s the uniform....

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
How did ww2 fighters know they were low on ammo? Finish the belt off with a bunch of tracers?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Schadenboner posted:

Hey Guns sighed as he unsheathed his zweihander...
lack of knowledge or not, it's a hell of a coincidence that someone working for the history channel's website stumbled across a painting from the First Genoese Savoyard War, which is the official title of what my guys were doing

Carth Dookie
Jan 28, 2013

Polyakov posted:

I don't mind, I will be getting on to Iran contra because we are about to hit it chronologically and that and all the stories about where they got their arms from is quite interesting in of itself. But I haven't encountered anything that would suggest it.

Hey Polyakov, I've been loving your posts so far. Iran is a blank spot in my knowledge and it's been great to read about. Keep it up.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Milo and POTUS posted:

How did ww2 fighters know they were low on ammo? Finish the belt off with a bunch of tracers?

"Besides guiding the shooter's direction of fire, tracer rounds can also be loaded at the end of a magazine to alert the shooter that the magazine is almost empty...During World War II, the Soviet Air Force used this practice for aircraft machine guns."

So yes, apparently, though how other factions could tell, I don't know. Maybe you just noticed that your guns weren't firing any more? Planes didn't carry a lot of machinegun ammo, and if you counted your bursts you could probably have a pretty good idea of how much left you had.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
based on pilot memoirs most talk about duration of burst (one second, two second, three second, etc) and reference the total firing time that they had, so i think that was usually the way to keep approximate track

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB


TK-42-1 posted:

i don’t think it’s the uniform....

That’s the joke man

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

LingcodKilla posted:

It’s across the board as of 01 OCTOBER.


It’s bullshit. I don’t want to look like a fat soldier or marine.

That explains why I'm seeing then all over the place, but not why the Navy is making them do it. Maybe I'll ask one next time I see one at the poke bar.

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB


sullat posted:

That explains why I'm seeing then all over the place, but not why the Navy is making them do it. Maybe I'll ask one next time I see one at the poke bar.

To streamline the uniform requirements.


It’s still bullshit. Anyone not in the brown water or special forces/over seas should still have chambrays and dungarees.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

LingcodKilla posted:

That’s the joke man

Ask him if he could see why kids love cinnamon toast crunch

Don Gato
Apr 28, 2013

Actually a bipedal cat.
Grimey Drawer

LingcodKilla posted:

It’s bullshit. I don’t want to look like a fat soldier or marine.

Fat sailors barely fitting into their cammies is the funniest part of my job, fite me irl.

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

LingcodKilla posted:

To streamline the uniform requirements.

Green and black woodland? It's AOR-2 isn't it?



For reference, that's up till now pretty distinctively been SEAL camo and is incredibly prized on the secondary market because it lets airsofters and similar larp as explicitly SEALs rather than someone in multicam who only might be a Cool Guy.

Considering the existence of the SEAL Challenge Contract, I'm thinking they're specifically appealing to the people who tried and missed.

(This is loving hilarious to me)

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB


Don Gato posted:

Fat sailors barely fitting into their cammies is the funniest part of my job, fite me irl.

I’m an eater not a fighter.

Argas
Jan 13, 2008
SRW Fanatic




sullat posted:

That explains why I'm seeing then all over the place, but not why the Navy is making them do it. Maybe I'll ask one next time I see one at the poke bar.

I could've sworn I read this several years back, and whatever military was doing it did it because it cultivated a different environment/culture, like they're closer to combat than not and poo poo like that.

Hmm...was it the air force that time?

Don Gato
Apr 28, 2013

Actually a bipedal cat.
Grimey Drawer

Argas posted:

I could've sworn I read this several years back, and whatever military was doing it did it because it cultivated a different environment/culture, like they're closer to combat than not and poo poo like that.

Hmm...was it the air force that time?

Warning: boring uniform chat incoming.

Navy has had to wear their blueberry Navy Working uniform since 2008, before the recent switch to what I lovingly refer to as the fat mulberry bush NWU Type III.

The entire Air Force has worn military camo since they were mandated to wear BDUs in 1988, and then for some godforsaken reason had their own uniform from 2007 and are now phasing back to wearing the same uniform as the Army, But With Different Nametapes (TM), like it was for most of the Air Force's history.

As for why, can't be a uniformed service without a uniform so civvies are right out, and everyone but me constantly complains about when they're not wearing fatigues at work.

Don Gato fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Oct 3, 2019

ChubbyChecker
Mar 25, 2018

Schadenboner posted:

Hey Guns sighed as he unsheathed his zweihander...

Speaking of... I've understood that zweihanders were carried on the shoulder like pikes or rifles and were sheathed during marches, but did pike or spearheads have sheaths?

ChubbyChecker
Mar 25, 2018

Don Gato posted:

Warning: boring uniform chat incoming.

Navy has had to wear their blueberry Navy Working uniform since 2008, before the recent switch to what I lovingly refer to as the fat mulberry bush NWU Type III.

The entire Air Force has worn military camo since they were mandated to wear BDUs in 1988, and then for some godforsaken reason had their own uniform from 2007 and are now phasing back to wearing the same uniform as the Army, But With Different Nametapes (TM), like it was for most of the Air Force's history.

As for why, can't be a uniformed service without a uniform so civvies are right out, and everyone but me constantly complains about when they're not wearing fatigues at work.

Blue gray naval camo uniform sounds like a bad idea if you happen to fall overboard.

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB


ChubbyChecker posted:

Blue gray naval camo uniform sounds like a bad idea if you happen to fall overboard.

The sea isn’t always blue. Sometimes it’s green.

ChubbyChecker
Mar 25, 2018

LingcodKilla posted:

The sea isn’t always blue. Sometimes it’s green.

Maybe they could use two sided uniforms?

Don Gato
Apr 28, 2013

Actually a bipedal cat.
Grimey Drawer

ChubbyChecker posted:

Blue gray naval camo uniform sounds like a bad idea if you happen to fall overboard.

It's meant to blend into the ship itself to make it harder on people to identify individuals, blending into the ocean is a feature unfortunate side effect.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

xthetenth posted:

For reference, that's up till now pretty distinctively been SEAL camo

Why do they need their own camo? It's not like it's more expensive to make. If it's objectively better camo, why doesn't everyone get it?

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Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009

Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa
You could make the fabric bleed an orange dye when it comes in contact with water

feel free to use this, why no, I don't see any problems with it

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