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I think Iran is stuck in Syria and Iraq in an oddly similar way to the US. Having troops there is expensive and unpopular at home. But both fret that leaving means disaffected Sunnis rise up and form ISISv2. But their very presence can provoke that exact sort of uprising. Quagmires aren't for just the US alone.
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Feb 26, 2021 16:30
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Probably also aware that the Gulf States aren't going to stop financing headchoppers just because they've left and alloying one of their few state allies to fall isn't to their advantage. The stakes are alot higher for them than for the US who are mostly there out of neurosis.
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Feb 26, 2021 16:39
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steinrokkan posted:The post misinterpreters and reading-comprehension lackers have logged on
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Feb 27, 2021 00:33
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America suffered one wounded and our collective feelings were hurt. So we bombed a desperate sovereign country because after ISIS sykes picot is rendered ineffective. Good job isis? Please insert drop you got to hand it to em quote here.
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Feb 27, 2021 03:59
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:America suffered one wounded and our collective feelings were hurt. Well, the rocket attack also killed a man and very seriously wounded more than one American. And whether it’s popular or not, huge swaths of territory formerly controlled by the Syrian government are cut up between Kurdish control, Arab warlords, American bases, Syrian bases, Iranian militias and SF, and ISIS. It is 100% valid to be upset with US foreign policy and presence. There are very good arguments to make that this particular strike is on dodgy legal ground! However, there is a lot of incredibly dumb narrative equating any strike inside Syria’s map borders with an attack on Assad’s regime or arguing that because all but one of the Americans wounded and the contractor killed were not US military, they aren’t even real. If the map border is your point of sovereign contention, oh boy, wait until you find out how many years the Kurds, NATO, and US forces have been operating in Syria, just plain not respecting Assad’s wishes. Typically Syria just doesn’t say much about when NATO and the US are stomping out ISIS inside Syrian borders, even though there is zero invitation from the government of Syria.
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Feb 27, 2021 09:21
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mlmp08 posted:It is 100% valid to be upset with US foreign policy and presence. There are very good arguments to make that this particular strike is on dodgy legal ground! However, there is a lot of incredibly dumb narrative equating any strike inside Syria’s map borders with an attack on Assad’s regime or arguing that because all but one of the Americans wounded and the contractor killed were not US military, they aren’t even real. Yeah the histrionics about this are pretty ridiculous, and I feel like there's either a lot of bad faith or ignorance going around with how severe the backlash has been in some corners. I'd also like the US to get our forces out of the region so they aren't there to be attacked in the first place, and I've been adamantly opposed to the US going to war with Assad for the entirety of the civil war (and was opposed to Trump assassinating Soleimani), but by the standards of the last couple decades, a missile or two targeting a militia across a border in retaliation for targeting US forces is basically a slap on the wrist, not some new warmongering policy that puts us on a collision course with Assad or Russia or a new low in the history of state sovereignty. Russia doesn't give a poo poo about those militias, and we know that because they don't raise a fuss when Israel routinely attacks them and even Iranian government assets in Syria.
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Feb 27, 2021 21:47
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So... apparently an Armenian minister lambasted Russian missiles they used as being ineffective in their last war, with only 10% detonating. Russians were quick to refute this with video evidence of their missiles working as expected. Including footage that seems to be them bombing a hospital in Syria five years ago, which they then denied to have bombed. Basically, posting MyWarCrimes.flv to defend your defective products.
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Feb 28, 2021 01:19
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Nenonen posted:So... apparently an Armenian minister lambasted Russian missiles they used as being ineffective in their last war, with only 10% detonating. Russians were quick to refute this with video evidence of their missiles working as expected. Including footage that seems to be them bombing a hospital in Syria five years ago, which they then denied to have bombed. not that i buy the original assertion, but i'm not sure how a sizzle reel of war crimes even refutes the charge. they could just avoid showing the other 9 times they were duds
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Feb 28, 2021 05:16
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Nenonen posted:So... apparently an Armenian minister lambasted Russian missiles they used as being ineffective in their last war, with only 10% detonating. Russians were quick to refute this with video evidence of their missiles working as expected. Including footage that seems to be them bombing a hospital in Syria five years ago, which they then denied to have bombed. The mafia state is working out well.
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Feb 28, 2021 05:29
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:not that i buy the original assertion, but i'm not sure how a sizzle reel of war crimes even refutes the charge. they could just avoid showing the other 9 times they were duds Maybe the war crimes video was all they had as proof of one exploding because the rest of the bombs were duds lol
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Feb 28, 2021 05:31
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Armenia forgot to read the "Fuse sold separately" fine print.Rent-A-Cop posted:Took you a month to think of this? Yes
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Feb 28, 2021 11:28
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Nenonen posted:Basically, posting MyWarCrimes.flv to defend your defective products.
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Feb 28, 2021 15:18
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Nenonen posted:So... apparently an Armenian minister lambasted Russian missiles they used as being ineffective in their last war, with only 10% detonating. Russians were quick to refute this with video evidence of their missiles working as expected. Including footage that seems to be them bombing a hospital in Syria five years ago, which they then denied to have bombed. Have any links on this?
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Feb 28, 2021 17:54
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It's not that surprising that export military equipment (which is already far lower quality than the domestic production runs) varies enough that a very low priority, small customer got a bunch of defective stuff they couldn't or wouldn't sell to anyone else. So it's 1000% plausible, but who knows if we will ever get many details. It's a pretty serious claim against russian military exports though, so the instant pushback isn't surprising
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Feb 28, 2021 19:03
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Count Roland posted:Have any links on this? https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39487/did-russia-try-to-refute-criticisms-of-its-missiles-by-showing-one-blowing-up-a-syrian-hospital
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Feb 28, 2021 23:42
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that does appear to be extremely straightforward evidence of them blowing up the hospital, yes
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Feb 28, 2021 23:58
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Herstory Begins Now posted:It's not that surprising that export military equipment (which is already far lower quality than the domestic production runs) varies enough that a very low priority, small customer got a bunch of defective stuff they couldn't or wouldn't sell to anyone else. So it's 1000% plausible, but who knows if we will ever get many details. It's a pretty serious claim against russian military exports though, so the instant pushback isn't surprising As far as I know this is a myth. Alot of stuff that is exported (by any country) is often equipment that is being phased out or otherwise older patterns, but it is not deliberately produced lovely and produced solely for export.
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Mar 1, 2021 02:55
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Randarkman posted:As far as I know this is a myth. Alot of stuff that is exported (by any country) is often equipment that is being phased out or otherwise older patterns, but it is not deliberately produced lovely and produced solely for export. In the Soviets case this was somewhat true. They weren't deliberately produced poorly, no, but they were often downgraded in terms of equipment fit compared to what was built for the home market.
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Mar 1, 2021 03:49
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:In the Soviets case this was somewhat true. They weren't deliberately produced poorly, no, but they were often downgraded in terms of equipment fit compared to what was built for the home market. There were *some* cases of things meant for export being downgraded - like the early MiG-23 export models where they didn't stick a RADAR in it. But then a lot of stuff was straight up identical or in even shipped from Red Army units - like T-62's and SA-6's Egypt got or things like Scuds, BMPs, or small arms which generally weren't classified as export models. Most "export models", though, were just equipment a generation or two behind the cutting edge - like the Iraqi T-72's. The T-72M sold to Iraq (and the Warsaw Pact - Iraqi tanks were shipped in as complete kits) was a clone of the original T-72 offered shortly after the T-72A went into production. Then the T-72M1 was sold as a T-72A clone just after the T-72B went into production. They weren't made of soft steel, they weren't issued steel training rounds (just older gen ammo), and they even had domestic upgrades like laminated armor, laser rangefinders, and electro-optical jammers that weren't present in the Soviet domestic equivalents - which were still in Red Army service at the time.
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Mar 1, 2021 08:13
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Warbadger posted:Most "export models", though, were just equipment a generation or two behind the cutting edge - like the Iraqi T-72's. The T-72M sold to Iraq (and the Warsaw Pact - Iraqi tanks were shipped in as complete kits) was a clone of the original T-72 offered shortly after the T-72A went into production. Then the T-72M1 was sold as a T-72A clone just after the T-72B went into production. They weren't made of soft steel, they weren't issued steel training rounds (just older gen ammo), and they even had domestic upgrades like laminated armor, laser rangefinders, and electro-optical jammers that weren't present in the Soviet domestic equivalents - which were still in Red Army service at the time.
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Mar 1, 2021 10:02
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Viktor Suvorov embellished a lot of his stories. Typically he began with a thing that technically existed and invented a new story around it, fabricating what it's purpose was or what had motivated it. He spindoctored poo poo, basically. The myth about the " That, combined with 1gen T-72s exported to Iraq complete with 1gen T-72 armour, going up against M1A1 Abrams's in Iraq 1, and a 1990's post-soviet Russian MIC desperate for money trying to figure out sales marketing applied to weapons industry without any state backing because the state is pants-on-head broke, is how we got the "monkey model" myths. If that doesn't sway you, remember this: unbiased weapons testing is a Thingtm. During the cold war (and before and after) actually getting to test your newest, most important expensive weapons wasn't about export sales or national arrogance. It was about national survival. Nice looking but actually Bad weapons could lose WW3 and kill you. To that point the USSR made drat sure to send their best stuff into proxy combat like everyone else and then some! They sent whole god drat soviet line units into war, multiple times, irl testing their people and operational science alongside the weapons. They still do as you can see.
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Mar 1, 2021 11:47
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Actually, since we're already talking about it - Another big Thingtm about secret Russians in arabian proxy wars Have you ever heard that old "Arabs can't win wars" wink-wink? Have you then wondered "But... why did the Soviets keep sending them all that special [dumb people]-model tanks and weapons for free if they were so bad at everything?" Bad weapons still cost money right? If no one could do war worth a drat why waste the money? At the very least, why waste so much of it? It would also be worthless for combat proving the equipment, right? What would you do if you wanted to  test your new weapons on people but you had even the slightest doubt on your clients ability to use them 'proficiently' ?I believe the Soviets almost always sent the best stuff they had to allied arab nations, and whenever there was a Big War coming they also sent their own soldiers to use the most important stuff. And I'd also easily believe that the first ones to invent that wink-wink were Russian. What other comforting excuse was there for why their weapons lost so badly against Israelis?
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Mar 1, 2021 13:07
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Not to tread in a world I'm not that knowledgeable in but I thought it was expected that "export" versions of most military equipment was either older or purposely downgraded in some way or another. That said, a bomb or missile that doesn't explode isn't a 'downgrade' but junk. I wouldn't put it past the Russians or any nation really to sell something to another country that they didn't expect to work or even be used. And if they don't like it they can talk to the manager.
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Mar 1, 2021 14:49
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Israel flat out shot down openly Soviet planes flown by Soviet pilots and told the world it happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20 This part's kind of funny: Egyptian military leaders were pleased with the outcome of the battle because the Soviets had long been criticizing Egypt's aerial losses to Israel and attributing them to a lack of skill among Egyptian fighter pilots. This also seemed notable since this discussion started out by talking about unexploded ordnance: The Israelis were not only skillful, but lucky as well: one Russian pilot managed to get on the tail of a Phantom and hit it with an AA-2 Atoll heat-seeking missile, but it failed to explode Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 16:25
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Viktor Suvorov embellished a lot of his stories. Typically he began with a thing that technically Arabs had a tough time winning wars since dictators don't want their armed forces to become too cohesive or powerful. They weren't primarily used against nation states but for internal control. Nothing to do with the weapons used, just a feature of dictatorships.
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Mar 1, 2021 16:30
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Like sure the T-72M and M1 were going to have difficulty going toe to toe with M1A1s in Desert Storm but when they were being sold in the early 80s in the Middle East their primary opponent was Israeli/Iranian M60A1s which it could on paper totally beat the pants off of. I don't call that selling intentionally weak equipment. Ammunition was one exception. IIRC the Soviets never allowed anything better than their early/mid-70s era BM15 rounds to be exported which while again, more than enough for any local Middle East conflict at the time, was woefully inadequate against modern tanks like the Abrams. That being said post 1973 the Soviets were apparently really frustrated with their Middle East client states: Brezhnev (According to Anatoly Chernyaev) posted:We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, "Save me!" He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 18:04
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:I believe the Soviets almost always sent the best stuff they had to allied arab nations (snip) In principle I agree, although I would make a couple of exceptions. Your state of the line radars, interceptors and surface to air missiles, for example, are too valuable secrets to give to some third world dictator when any unloyal pilot or officer might defect and take the secrets with him. Obviously the risk was greatest with airplanes, as seen in Operation Diamond. Secondly, USSR wasn't made of T-64's or even T-72's, they were also needed by Russians themselves and WP allies. Give the Iraqis some T-72's for elite units, T-55 or T-62 is a capable enough tank to fill second line divisions and you can give those at a discount.
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Mar 1, 2021 19:06
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Budzilla posted:I do realise he does have crazy theories but Soviet equipment do have export models like a lot of western militaries. Entirely correct. The opposite wasn't what I was arguing, but maybe that got muddled. The whole thing with the "monkey model" mythos is that it's been endlessly repeated by the  crowd and they are the reason it keeps going. That is what I was speaking against.The tanks, eh. It gets more messy than the other stuff. Sure sure, the T-64s were never exported, but then they were also bloody disasters until the mid seventies, and by then the 72s were coming out good too and you had the 80s in development. Outside of that, the USSR still sent most everything radar artillery and airpower, and again, they often "supplied" cutting edge radar systems etc that never got to hear anything but spoken russian. Iraq, well, that's an altogether different case - they were never really a soviet client as much they were a customer. Export models aren't as a rule inferior to base line - if they were, no country would buy it over just building it themselves instead* All in all - Soviet/Russian hardware consistently does badly in the mideast to this day but it's never been for a lack of trying, in spite of what you might hear. *Not valid in Canada ThisIsJohnWayne fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 23:02
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Wouldn't monkey models be the opposite of a biotruth? Instead of failing because of some intrinsic Arab inability to win wars, the monkey model thing suggests it's because of lovely equipment.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:04
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Nenonen posted:https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39487/did-russia-try-to-refute-criticisms-of-its-missiles-by-showing-one-blowing-up-a-syrian-hospital Thanks.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:06
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Sinteres posted:Wouldn't monkey models be the opposite of a biotruth? Instead of failing because of some intrinsic Arab inability to win wars, the monkey model thing suggests it's because of lovely equipment. The other explanation is that the military's primary function isn't actually fighting foreign enemies, so it more resembles the knight class than a modern state military. That said, that logic could apply to every autocratic country with a small ruling coalition.as our 2020 nk/artsakh war shows that system can win wars.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:25
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Sinteres posted:Wouldn't monkey models be the opposite of a biotruth? Instead of failing because of some intrinsic Arab inability to win wars, the monkey model thing suggests it's because of lovely equipment. Why are these the only options? There are many factors that go into a military performance. Just look what a highly motivated, well trained Hezbollah did. Look at how the Egyptian anti tank forces performed in 1973.
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Mar 2, 2021 05:21
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Vasukhani posted:The other explanation is that the military's primary function isn't actually fighting foreign enemies, so it more resembles the knight class than a modern state military. That said, that logic could apply to every autocratic country with a small ruling coalition.as our 2020 nk/artsakh war shows that system can win wars. Despite what often gets bandied about here, I don't think the countries like this are deliberately going about trying to make lovely miltiaries though. There is a lot of ink spilled on how military effectiveness is achieved and how adopting "more modern or western" forms of organization actually can result in a degradation of effectiveness when these are grafted onto societies without the social or economic infrastructure required to sustain these structures. Large scale corruption, a low proportion of NCOs/officers, uneven conscription and recruitment, understrength units, lack of properly trained and experienced supporting elements, there's a myriad of these soft factors that go into degrading the effectiveness of a military force before you get into who has more or better gear. I also suspect that Soviet/Russian arms industries have been coasting for decades on just how good, cheap and reliable their first decade or so of weapons systems after WWII were and that they never really afterwards made anything that was as good for its time and price as the AKM, T-54/55, RPG-7 and that whole crew.
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Mar 2, 2021 05:21
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Randarkman posted:As far as I know this is a myth. Alot of stuff that is exported (by any country) is often equipment that is being phased out or otherwise older patterns, but it is not deliberately produced lovely and produced solely for export. It's neither a theory or a myth, domestic and export versions of stuff absolutely are built to very different standards by basically every country that produces military equipment. Who gets the best stuff is basically production runs for self-use -> close, long-term allies -> treaty/pact members -> big countries paying cash -> whoever can pay cash for what they want. Granted top end stuff usually never makes it outside of close allies or at most gets stationed in country, but is still operated by russian/american/chinese etc. crews. Afaik soviets were generally pretty good about selling equipment that was full capacity (albeit if you were a smaller buyer, you weren't going to be dictating that you're getting fresh production run stuff and not just whatever happened to be remaining in warehouses... which I'm guessing is where the Armenian missiles would fit in, assuming their complaint is factual). American export military gear has historically been on an entirely different tier from what the US military is actually fielding. Eg export M1abrams vs latest gen M1 abrams is a prime example. In particular the US basically never exports latest gen optics and defensive packages outside of to very close allies (and unless something has changed, Saudi Arabia didn't rate highly enough to be getting that stuff). Electronic systems in particular are very, very much not widely distributed and are kept very, very secret.
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Mar 2, 2021 05:53
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You should probably be responding to the many others who have weighed in on this instead of me at this point. In short what you are saying is not at odds with what they said in more detail than I did, which is that we're not talking about purposefully downgraded or lovely export models, but rather the fact that what is exported tends to be older production runs and the like.
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Mar 2, 2021 06:07
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Sinteres posted:Wouldn't monkey models be the opposite of a biotruth? Instead of failing because of some intrinsic Arab inability to win wars, the monkey model thing suggests it's because of lovely equipment. It's not logical at all. Racist motivation don't need it to be logical, its about getting to feel and say that everything about the bad folks is bad. They are bad, and their things are bad because they are bad. That's what's fueling this stupid thing to be so widespread on the internet. Military equipment hasn't been produced in intentionally inferior versions to be sold to inferior peoples. It's a lie.
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Mar 2, 2021 10:27
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Herstory Begins Now posted:It's neither a theory or a myth, domestic and export versions of stuff absolutely are built to very different standards by basically every country that produces military equipment. Who gets the best stuff is basically production runs for self-use -> close, long-term allies -> treaty/pact members -> big countries paying cash -> whoever can pay cash for what they want. Granted top end stuff usually never makes it outside of close allies or at most gets stationed in country, but is still operated by russian/american/chinese etc. crews. US and UK military exports to rich gulf nations in the last 40 years are exceptions, not the norm. There's not a single thing about those that are normal and you shouldn't look to them to figure out what normal is.
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Mar 2, 2021 11:02
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Unimpressed posted:Why are these the only options? There are many factors that go into a military performance. Just look what a highly motivated, well trained Hezbollah did. Look at how the Egyptian anti tank forces performed in 1973. I didn't say they were the only options, I was saying it didn't appear to be in the category of race essentialist theories.
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Mar 2, 2021 15:40
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:US and UK military exports to rich gulf nations in the last 40 years are exceptions, not the norm. There's not a single thing about those that are normal and you shouldn't look to them to figure out what normal is. how is that an exception when that's a very significant chunk of the entire arms market edit nevermind I think this post was being sarcastic
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Mar 2, 2021 18:11
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Sinteres posted:Israel flat out shot down openly Soviet planes flown by Soviet pilots and told the world it happened: Eh NVA pilots clearly were able to compete with American pilots using pretty much the same aircraft during the same era, it may have very well been that the Israelis just had better pilots and tactics. If Soviet equipment is dramatically simply inferior why were the Vietnamese able to compete? Also, Iraqi Soviet tanks were able to compete with Chieftans/m60A1s (both directly comparable) during the Iraq-Iran war. The F-14 did very well, but it was a fourth generation aircraft compared to the third generation Mig-21s/23s it was going against. That said, the Mig-25 did as well as the F-14 during the war but again it was arguably just a superior aircraft versus the Phantoms did was fighting. --------------- Also, the Gulf War was also a yes and no situation. Yes, the Iraqis were using some T-72s (still a relative minor part of their force) comparable to T-72s still in regular Soviet use, but they 1. had different crews, and more importantly, the Iraqis were using much older HEAT rounds which were just nowhere near effective against the depleted uranium armor packages that the Abrams had just received. (The M1 Abrams not the M1A1 didnt have a DU package and probably would have still been vulnerable to HEAT hits. The original Abrams was considered a bit of a boondoggle consider its cost.) The Soviets had already moved on to Sabot (APDS) rounds and at very least those rounds would have much more of a shot penetrating DU armor. The battle of Norfolk when the way it did largely because the T-72s on the ground really just couldn't penetrate M1A1s with old HEAT rounds and didn't have the air superiority to even the odds. If you want to say that from the late 1970s to 1991, the US was clearly gaining superiority on the Soviets, I wouldn't necessarily disagree but to only a point. Also, we know the capabilities of all this equipment, it isn't a mystery and it really depends on the situation. An under armored Saudi Abrams tank isn't invincible because it was made in the US. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 22:27
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