|
IIRC the Iraqis did have older APFSDS rounds (Steel BM-9 and Tungsten BM-15 APFSDS) but it didn't make a difference since those would have struggled against the original M1 without the extra DU armor. The M1's original composite package was actually decent by the standards of the late 70s/early 80s, especially against HEAT. Like the Soviets really didn't trust their client states when it came to ammunition. The best round available to any client state until the fall of the wall, even "reliable" ones like East Germany, was from 1972. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Mar 2, 2021 |
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 00:25 |
|
|
Mr Luxury Yacht posted:IIRC the Iraqis did have older APFSDS rounds (Steel BM-9 and Tungsten BM-15 APFSDS) but it wouldn't have made a difference since those would have struggled against the original M1 without the extra DU armor. The M1's original composite package was actually decent by the standards of the late 70s/early 80s, especially against HEAT. In the end, The T-72 is is going to be as effective as its ammunition. If they were using HEAT or possibly first-gen APFSDS rounds, it isn't a surprise they weren't going to be penetrated DU. The Soviet had radically upgraded its APFSDS projectiles by the late 1980s, so it just isn't a particularly useful comparison. Also, the Iraqis would have at least had a shot using HEAT/older APFSDS projectiles versus an original M1. It was a bit of a boondoogle though because of its immense energy requirements, cost, and that it used a 105mm gun.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
All of this nuts and bolts comparisons of who had what model tank with +1 premium special ammo misses the fact that the Coalition armored forces had been training and developing doctrine to fight Soviet tank formations for the better part of three decades before Desert Storm, something you can't say of the Iraqis. The fact that the battle took place in the open desert instead of the Fulda Gap and the Iraqis had nothing in the way of air support was also an exponential force multiplier.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Also, the Iraqis would have at least had a shot using HEAT/older APFSDS projectiles versus an original M1. It was a bit of a boondoogle though because of its immense energy requirements, cost, and that it used a 105mm gun. Maybe on the day it was introduced but by 1983 the M833 105mm rounds available had no issue with T-72As, and more importantly the M1still has thermal cameras and a computerised fire control system which the Iraqis never had even by 1991. But yeah as Vincent Van Goatse says it's more than just smashing individual tanks together. When Iraq came up against US Marine units equipped with by then obsolete M60A1s they still were annihilated. There's a poster in the Mihist thread who was in a Marine tank unit during Gulf War 1. His posts on his experiences are pretty drat fascinating if you can dig them up. From what I recall he basically described the Iraqi army being so utterly demoralized from the air campaign that they were just constantly dealing with whole units trying to surrender. But also that nobody expected things to go as smoothly as it did and prior to the ground war kicking off everyone expected it to be a bloody slog. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Mar 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 22:56
|
|
|
Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Maybe on the day it was introduced but by 1983 the M833 105mm rounds available had no issue with T-72As, and more importantly the M1still has thermal cameras and a computerised fire control system which the Iraqis never had even by 1991. I was speaking more in general, but the original m1 would have at least been vulnerable to Iraqi tanks. I think American crews would have still prevailed with the advantages they had, but with a DU armor package, it was going to be a massacre. I don't know if the original M1 though was going to do as well in the Fulda gap. quote:But yeah as Vincent Van Goatse says it's more than just smashing individual tanks together. When Iraq came up against US Marine units equipped with by then obsolete M60A1S they still were annihilated. Yeah, obviously and that is why it hard to copy and paste particularly the experience of the first gulf war since it was a generally a one-sided affair. The US could easily strike Iraqi infrastructure and AA using cruise missiles and achieve air superiority and the Iraqis really didn't have a response along with everything else (older ammunition, poor morale/training/leadership, simply outnumbered etc etc). The war did show that many American platforms were clearly effective though but how they would compete in a more level playing field (Central Europe) is much more subjective. (Granted, it is also arguable that the Soviets by trying to compete with the US toe to toe in terms of hardware put themselves in a vulnerable economic position. At very least, Afganistan and developing the Buran/Polybus in order to compete with the Shuttle/SDI, were massive screw-ups. )
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 23:13
|
|
|
heard terry gross interviewing brown moses today, and it was in that moment that i knew that he's made it
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2021 05:31
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/1367806022593691665?s=21 Question for anyone who may know: Is this welcoming dance the kind of thing people just know or is this unique or choreographed to this welcome? I don’t know much at all about ceremonies like this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 13:13
|
|
|
Ardennes posted: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? The Israeli air force planned and prepared for that specific encounter. There's no guarantee that ongoing Israel vs Russian engagement would have consistently produced the same results. My guess is over a longer term it would have balanced out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 13:56
|
|
|
The USAF and USN fighter aircraft performed well against Vietnamese Air Force. The North Vietnamese, early in the war, had some success (still a 2:1 loss ratio against ALL aircraft types) against strike aircraft and unarmed aircraft. Certainly more success than the US liked! But the US was often operating outside the range if friendly radar and well inside enemy early warning radar ranges. That’s not a clean comparison with border fights where ground control intercept is available to pilots. It was largely a case that the US maintained maintained a favorable ratio despite flying in very inhospitable conditions (deep in enemy airspace without friendly radar coverage, with enemy having good early warning radar and some SAM coverage.) MiG-21s were left using supersonic hit and run tactics almost exclusively. In every major head to head engagement they got crushed. The terrain of Arab/Israeli conflicts and battlespace really ensured the Israelis didn’t face such a situation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 14:43
|
|
|
mlmp08 posted:https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/1367806022593691665?s=21 Simple cutesy little dances like this are ubiquitous and basically everyone knows them except maybe extremely westernized portions of the capital cities. This one is probably partially choreographed, but if you go to a MENA wedding or certain religious functions (for Shia anyway, I have less experience with day to day Sunni stuff) you will absolutely see everyone do stuff like this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 17:34
|
|
|
Zedhe Khoja posted:Simple cutesy little dances like this are ubiquitous and basically everyone knows them except maybe extremely westernized portions of the capital cities. This one is probably partially choreographed, but if you go to a MENA wedding or certain religious functions (for Shia anyway, I have less experience with day to day Sunni stuff) you will absolutely see everyone do stuff like this. It’s like someone has never been to a quinceanera or a wedding when they put on the cha cha slide.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 18:54
|
|
|
Standing around coldly looking at people from a distance is my cultural identity. Think Swedish bus stop but not such uniformly spaced distances.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 18:58
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7OUa3ebH54 This scene from a netflix show about weirdo rural religious Sunnis makes me think they have cutesy dances too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 21:53
|
|
|
Zedhe Khoja posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7OUa3ebH54 This just feels like further evidence that Turks and Greeks are the same people divided by a few happenstances of history.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2021 23:16
|
|
|
Grape posted:This just feels like further evidence that Turks and Greeks are the same people divided by a few happenstances of history. It's more just general cultural similarities across the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, the Levant and Egypt. Cuisine, music, dancing, far more than most of them will ever admit there's alot of commonalities there in folk culture even across religious and linguistic differences. People often draw the obvious conclusion that it's because of the Ottoman Empire (where it should be noted the different religious groups, though they had interaction with each other and the center, actually lived very separate from each other), but it goes back much further than that. e: I think it was in Serbia before WW1 (probably went on afterwards as well, but the book I read was specifically about WW1) where the various political parties and movements would do their own dances in the villages and neioghborhoods they visited during election campaigns. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2021 00:04
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:It's more just general cultural similarities across the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, the Levant and Egypt. Cuisine, music, dancing, far more than most of them will ever admit there's alot of commonalities there in folk culture even across religious and linguistic differences. People often draw the obvious conclusion that it's because of the Ottoman Empire (where it should be noted the different religious groups, though they had interaction with each other and the center, actually lived very separate from each other), but it goes back much further than that. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2021 01:03
|
|
|
Bashar Assad has the Rona. Here's hoping he ends up like Herman Cain.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:08
|
|
|
Marg Bar Amrika https://twitter.com/ziyanm_/status/1369507623834447874
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 08:53
|
|
|
FiskTireBoy posted:Bashar Assad has the Rona. Here's hoping he ends up like Herman Cain. Herman Cain was 74 and had lovely health. Bashar is a year younger than Boris Johnson, and more fit. Don't hold your hopes too high.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 09:26
|
|
|
This is not only awful, but also pointless.  Why wouldn't you use real vaccines in your supah secret plan?! Why would you do your best to avoid the perfect cover? Did the CIA-director responsible have a special evil quota to fill?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 10:45
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is not only awful, but also pointless. This thread talked about this issue fairly recently. I don't recall if we decided if the CIA provided real vaccines as part of this. The OP doesn't say if the jabs were vaccine or placebo.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 12:28
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:This thread talked about this issue fairly recently. I don't recall if we decided if the CIA provided real vaccines as part of this. The OP doesn't say if the jabs were vaccine or placebo. The hepatitis shots were real, but the CIA only provided the first of three (the schedule took six months to complete) to a poor community before moving on to the wealthy community Bin Laden lived in. It was pretty clear that the collateral damage to public health, to medical workers, and to American prestige was not worth it. The CIA has stated that it will not use vaccine programs as cover again, but clearly the damage has been done. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/ https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/20/314231260/cia-says-it-will-no-longer-use-vaccine-programs-as-cover Kaal fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Mar 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 13:49
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:This thread talked about this issue fairly recently. I don't recall if we decided if the CIA provided real vaccines as part of this. The OP doesn't say if the jabs were vaccine or placebo. I recall the Pakistani guy running the thing had access to the vaccines and that some complaints were lodged against him for taking them & the coolers. While I've never seen a 100% confirmation the vaccines were real (or fake) it seems like it'd have been pretty easy to just use real vaccines. ^ Yeah, so real vaccines but they didn't provide the followup boosters. That makes sense. So then the question becomes whether they told people they'd need the boosters and whether the Pakistani authorities bothered to come in and provide them after the fact. That said the damage was probably already done when people started making half-baked claims of the CIA giving fake vaccinations and news/the internet picked them up. Plenty of poor decisions in this situation. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Mar 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 13:50
|
|
|
The CIA and their harebrained plots probably carry the biggest blame for anti-american sentiments in many parts of the world.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 13:58
|
|
|
Collateral Damage posted:The CIA and their harebrained plots probably carry the biggest blame for anti-american sentiments in many parts of the world. I'd say they're about even with the average american tbh
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 14:42
|
|
|
The past year has made explaining America to my Turkish friends a lot easier. It used to be impossible to explain how unconnected to reality most Americans are.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 15:39
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is not only awful, but also pointless. That would have cost an extra $200
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 19:05
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
e: how did this get in here??
Vintersorg fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Mar 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 19:46
|
|
|
Kaal posted:The hepatitis shots were real, but the CIA only provided the first of three (the schedule took six months to complete) to a poor community before moving on to the wealthy community Bin Laden lived in. It was pretty clear that the collateral damage to public health, to medical workers, and to American prestige was not worth it. The CIA has stated that it will not use vaccine programs as cover again, but clearly the damage has been done. See, this is why I'd never made it anywhere in the CIA. My paranoia would have told me that this is a really cover-blowingly bad idea, as Bin Laden would have just needed to take a good look at what happens in his neighborhood and then he would have wondered loudly "why did this surprise vaccination campaign suddenly leave the poor places without giving the needed missing shots, and then come straight for the community I'm hiding in, something fishy is going on" and I would have suggested either completing the first half of the campaign before moving on, to lower the chance of people noticing something off, or using a second team to "speed up the vaccination campaign", aka going after Bin Laden's hiding place. The first option if the project isn't time-sensitive, the second if time is critical. But apparently a country pumping a loving trillion bucks into its military each year can't spend the money and effort to properly conduct a secret espionage project. I'd expect something like this to happen in a spy comedy movie, not in real life. Then again, exploding cigars. I don't know why I'm even surprised now. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 20:46
|
|
|
From the CIA's perspective, how is the fact that vaccination rates in Pakistan are going to trail global averages a loss for the USA? It's a horrible and morally repugnant state of affairs, there is no doubt, but how exactly does it damage American interests in the region?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 21:12
|
|
|
Grip it and rip it posted:From the CIA's perspective, how is the fact that vaccination rates in Pakistan are going to trail global averages a loss for the USA? It's a horrible and morally repugnant state of affairs, there is no doubt, but how exactly does it damage American interests in the region? That's completely irrelevant to conducting a secret operation using a vaccination campaign as a cover. Hoping that the enemy is too dumb to notice stupid errors in your operation is not really how things should be done. Though I guess you could be quoting some CIA-goon right there and it would explain all the various failures of the CIA pretty well. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 21:33
|
|
|
Also even if it did it wouldn't matter. The CIA fucks up constantly and frequently harms American interests (both real and pretend) and historically is almost powerless against rival security agencies, even from tiny minor countries. But it's defacto is the secret police of 2/3 the planet because of American economic hegemony and the legacy of colonialism so there are no repercussions for being mass murdering clowns who are constantly caught being such.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 21:36
|
|
|
Also, the doctor in charge didn't know he was aiding the CIA and is now in jail for life because of it 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 21:56
|
|
|
Zedhe Khoja posted:Also even if it did it wouldn't matter. The CIA fucks up constantly and frequently harms American interests (both real and pretend) and historically is almost powerless against rival security agencies, even from tiny minor countries. But it's defacto is the secret police of 2/3 the planet because of American economic hegemony and the legacy of colonialism so there are no repercussions for being mass murdering clowns who are constantly caught being such. So they secretly police 2/3rds of the world, murdering with impunity, but are incapable of managing the rival intelligence assets of even minor countries. That's quite the knife's edge to walk.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 22:00
|
|
|
Zedhe Khoja posted:The past year has made explaining America to my Turkish friends a lot easier. It used to be impossible to explain how unconnected to reality most Americans are. Turkey is virtually an identical miniature version of America in regards to just about all problems so I'm not sure why they were confused.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 22:28
|
|
|
Grip it and rip it posted:So they secretly police 2/3rds of the world, murdering with impunity, but are incapable of managing the rival intelligence assets of even minor countries. That's quite the knife's edge to walk. Most countries don't have an independent intelligence apparatus in opposition to the CIA due to the legacies of colonialism and ww2. Places that do/did, like the USSR, Iran, or Cuba, were/are able to handle the intelligence agency part of their conflict with America rather easily. The Warsaw pact was never successfully infiltrated and Castro styled on the CIA and won a proxy war against the US despite being an impoverished country the size of a small state. America's primary weapon against those countries is their control of international trade and conventional military, not the inbred Yalies the world is forced to tolerate.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
Grip it and rip it posted:So they secretly police 2/3rds of the world, murdering with impunity, but are incapable of managing the rival intelligence assets of even minor countries. That's quite the knife's edge to walk. Basically every conspiracy theory is the same. Like pizzagate uncovered a cabal of child-raping world-controlling pedophiles, and yet these evil masterminds have their meetings in a pizzeria's basement. But really I can't think of anything the CIA has done in the last 10 years post-Osama that anyone actually knows about, other than their marginal assistance to rebels in Syria, which they also stopped years ago. I thought maybe that was just my ignorance, but that's also the only thing in the past 10 years listed on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#History ). It kind of seems like talking about the CIA is equivalent to talking about Freemasons — maybe they were a relevant powerful, semi-autonomous, secretive group at one point in time, but since the Cold War it seems like it has more or less just some bog-standard intelligence department like any large country has. I mean maybe they have super secret operations, but the fact that almost nothing significant in the past 25 years has leaked out besides the Osama campaign either means they have the best counterintelligence in the entire world for leaks, surpassing Apple's, or they really just haven't done much of note except as a support role for intelligence gathering. Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Mar 11, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 15:43
|
|
|
Saladman posted:It kind of seems like talking about the CIA is equivalent to talking about Freemasons — maybe they were a relevant powerful, semi-autonomous, secretive group at one point in time, but since the Cold War it seems like it has more or less just some bog-standard intelligence department like any large country has.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 16:27
|
|
|
Saladman posted:Basically every conspiracy theory is the same. Like pizzagate uncovered a cabal of child-raping world-controlling pedophiles, and yet these evil masterminds have their meetings in a pizzeria's basement. Uh remember extraordinary rendition? CIA paramilitaries and drones killing people? The CIA was practically the tip of the spear when Afghanistan was invaded. Post 9/11 restrictions and oversight were greatly eased. I don't really know what they're up to these days but it was a very busy number of years for the agency.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 17:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 00:25 |
|
|
Saladman posted:Basically every conspiracy theory is the same. Like pizzagate uncovered a cabal of child-raping world-controlling pedophiles, and yet these evil masterminds have their meetings in a pizzeria's basement. I think in the last 10 years the CIA has been pretty involved in operations in Iran? From hacking attacks on nuclear infrastructure, to straight up assassinations (probably assisting the Mossad)
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 18:34
|
|