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In an alternate geopolitical situation americans started getting called Kyles
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Mar 5, 2022 21:28
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Son of Rodney posted:I keep reading that Ukraine will lose the conventional war at some point soon-ish due to having way less soldiers. This is a bit confusing to me, the Russians have invaded with roughly 200k troops afaik, but doesn't the Ukrainian army also have roughly that number? According to the internet they also have reservists numbering multiple times that and there's been no lack of volunteers either. Material is probably was more of a problem, but they're also getting a lot of supplies from outside, plus capturing some Russian equipment. Russia has more. That is it. The massive flood of NATO stuff + the unexpected underperformance of the Russian forces has evened things but if Russia wants Ukraine they will get it, it just depends on how much they will have to pay to do it. Ukraine's hope of victory has always relied on making it too costly, not in any sort of conventional victory. Russia will win on numbers and war crimes not even counting nukes if they have the will, and at the moment Putin seems to be doubling down.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:29
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The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:30
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ImpAtom posted:Russia has more. That is it. The massive flood of NATO stuff + the unexpected underperformance of the Russian forces has evened things but if Russia wants Ukraine they will get it, it just depends on how much they will have to pay to do it. Ukraine's hope of victory has always relied on making it too costly, not in any sort of conventional victory.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:31
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Is there a military term for when an invading force is so far underwater in terms of draining resources that the amount of resources needed to get that force back into fighting shape outweighs the value of the force itself?
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Mar 5, 2022 21:31
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Chalks posted:The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that. I believe the logjam is getting all the bullets from Poland into Ukraine and from there to the front line troops. Logistics is _hard_
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Mar 5, 2022 21:32
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Chalks posted:The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that. I'm not sure I believe they are, but having access to supplies on the border is not the same as getting them to the besieged areas.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:32
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Chalks posted:The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that. Might be partly an issue of transporting it where it's needed--piles of ammunition on the Polish border aren't much help to Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:32
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the rat fandom posted:Is there a military term for when an invading force is so far underwater in terms of draining resources that the amount of resources needed to get that force back into fighting shape outweighs the value of the force itself? Pyrrhic victory is probbly close enough. If they win, that is.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:33
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Son of Rodney posted:I keep reading that Ukraine will lose the conventional war at some point soon-ish due to having way less soldiers. This is a bit confusing to me, the Russians have invaded with roughly 200k troops afaik, but doesn't the Ukrainian army also have roughly that number? According to the internet they also have reservists numbering multiple times that and there's been no lack of volunteers either. Material is probably was more of a problem, but they're also getting a lot of supplies from outside, plus capturing some Russian equipment. Russia simply has more of everything. People and materiel both, whether it's small arms, tanks, trucks, aircraft, and so on. Their stuff is also more modern than what Ukraine has, and they could produce more while they bomb Ukraine's infrastructure to rubble. A military defeat for Ukraine with such a heavy mismatch of forces is just the most likely. Right now we are at the stage where both sides are inflicting heavy losses at each other and we here in our armchairs are getting heavily slanted news. I'd generally caution against optimism. Estimates are that 10 million people will be displaced.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:33
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Kraftwerk posted:once the Russians snap out of it and get their poo poo together? Yeah I'm not sure this is "a thing". I think that kind of thing happens when stuff like morale goes up, or the leadership soberly assesses the facts, and also the economy isn't shriveling into a skeleton.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:33
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Antigravitas posted:Russia simply has more of everything. People and materiel both, whether it's small arms, tanks, trucks, aircraft, and so on. Their stuff is also more modern than what Ukraine has, and they could produce more while they bomb Ukraine's infrastructure to rubble. IMO the biggest issue for the Russians in the next couple weeks is resupply. Their offensives will stall and collapse if they can't get food, fuel, and ammo to the forward units. Ukraine seems to be doing a good job of cutting that off thus far.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:35
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After seeing that interview with the mayor who had Bandera portrait behind him I wanted to dive a little further into learning about how prevalent the far right is in Ukraine. It seems like the 2 biggest far right groups are the Svoboda political party and the Azov Battalion. Theres a number of other groups but they seem more fringe. After reading a number of sources, it sounds like Svoboda in around 2010 had about 10% of the national vote in parliamentary elections, which sounds real bad. But after Euromaidan, in 2014 that dropped to 4%, and in 2019 it dropped to 2% with no representation in parliament. It seems like that is going in a good direction already. The Azov Battalion seems like nationalizing the Proud Boys, which is real bad, but at their peak membership was only 2500. It seems like their existence is purely out of the need for more bodies for the Donbas conflict, and not necessarily out of political will to recognize them (especially given the fall of the Svoboda party). It kind of feels like Ukraine was denazifying fine before Russia decided to invade in 2014, and again in 2022. Am I missing anything here? Not close to an expert on Ukraine, and I'm trying to understand why a bunch of other leftists are towing the Russian line since none of it seems to have anything to do with socialism and the only explainable reason is "America is bad" (which, true) but holy gently caress a bunch of poor people are dying for both sides for seemingly stupid reasons.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:35
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Rinkles posted:
I don't want to burst your bubble, but there have most def been casualties, maybe even in 2000 or 3000 deaths range. Putin wants to erase Ukraine. He doesnt care about the obstacles, he'll go do it.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:36
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Antigravitas posted:Their stuff is also more modern than what Ukraine has, and they could produce more while they bomb Ukraine's infrastructure to rubble. How will they produce more stuff? With what supplies? Will Putin declare a Five Year Plan to build high grade semiconductors entirely inside of Russia? They could surely produce more military gear of various kinds, of course, but this stuff?
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Mar 5, 2022 21:37
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'debt overhang' in a value idiom, I guess
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Mar 5, 2022 21:37
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Antigravitas posted:Russia simply has more of everything. People and materiel both, whether it's small arms, tanks, trucks, aircraft, and so on. Their stuff is also more modern than what Ukraine has, and they could produce more while they bomb Ukraine's infrastructure to rubble. Ukraine's stuff is slowly getting upgraded from the captured gear, but on balance it's still behind, yeah. They're also getting nifty toys (some cutting edge, at least the stuff that isn't from Germany) to help level the playing field. T-72XYZ vs Javelin is a bad matchup for the tank. However, russia categorically CANNOT produce more top-tier stuff. Unless China is able to supply them with semiconductors and high-tech parts they can't make the stuff on their own. Whatever T-90s and aircraft they lose...they lose it, period. And this is supposedly the stuff they keep at the ready; their reserves are going to have a high failure rate from what we've seen. Not saying they won't be able to field effective army/air force, but these losses are very real and hurt a lot more than if the US loses an abrams or something.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:38
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TearsOfPirates posted:I don't want to burst your bubble, but there have most def been casualties, maybe even in 2000 or 3000 deaths range. ...you...you realize they were talking about deaths caused by the breaking of the humanitarian ceasefire
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Mar 5, 2022 21:38
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The crooks who've grown fat off Russia's feudalized crony capitalism are about to discover just how non-trivial running a command economy is. Planning and executing an invasion may be difficult, but transitioning overnight from laissez-faire capitalism to a command economy? That poo poo is much harder. Mess up the central planning of the economy and you don't just get a bogged down offensive and an embarrasing number of casualties. Bungle the central planning and you get famine, anarchy and/or complete breakdown of society. The regime can't just say "keep doing what you did before, substituting any closed-off markets with China and/or India". This isn't just going to look like a recession or even a bigger North Korea. This is going to be a complete meltdown of their economy. Kreml doesn't have a socialist economic system ready to pick up the slack when millions lose their income and supply chains break down. I am slightly baffled that so many analysts are down playing the effect of these sanctions, as just a period of economic hardship. Not trying to be a doomer, but I am somewhat worried at the potential resulting humanitarian disaster and the risk of economic meltdown not causing a clean regime change, but a splintering into a mess of warlords and break-away republics. That's another thing which baffles me: so many outsiders expect that economic breakdown will result in a bigger North Korea or a regime change. It can get a lot more messy than that and a lot more violent. I'm sure various intelligence agencies and foreign/state departments are perfectly aware of that risk, but I'm not confident they're all wise enough to consider it unequivocally a bad thing.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:38
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Nessus posted:I am not so sure any of this part holds true. Much of their modern stuff seems to either be breaking down or being abandoned by its crew, and then stolen by a Ukrainian farmer, who I assume will either keep it as a trophy or pass it on to UA - either way, not a Russian asset any more. Also discounts the material coming in via Poland.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:38
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TheRat posted:Yes? That is definitely a lot better. I can't believe 'Please don't use racist stereotypes' is such a contentious issue. I'm sure the Russians who likely don't care if someone calls them Ivan, Rusky etc are happy you're offended on their behalf. And unless you want to say that "Tommy" is racist I think "racist stereotype" is reaching very far. If Britain ever puts troops into Ukraine during this war I hope no one will dare say "Tommy's sending in the troops", because that would be awful and clearly dehumanizing the Brits. Also of course referring to them as Russians, troops, etc is better, I dont actually think anyone is using it without being a little tongue in cheek and adding a bit of levity to a discussion that is frankly depressing and demoralizing for most. If we start seeing BBC news coverage beginning with "Today Ivan moved closer to Kyiv" then maybe it's a problem. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 5, 2022 21:39
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ronya posted:https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569 That is a brutal assessment but falls in line from what we are seeing everywhere.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:40
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Chalks posted:The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that. The thing is, does the West even have that much ammunition? Nobody has been really preparing for war for the last decades.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:41
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Russia also has to get all that stuff across the border and maintain and supply it. If they can barely support 200k troops there as it is now, they may never actually outnumber the ukranians in practice. Certainly now as Ukraine mobilizes.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:41
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ronya posted:https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569 Would the greater goon permit me a moment of small professional satisfaction: if this is accurate (and it certainly "smells" of the writing of an analyst, if you'll pardon the expression), the author posits requiring 500,000 soldiers to occupy Ukraine. One of my posts pages and pages ago stated that, by doctrine, you'd need around 1:100, or 400,000. So...yeah. Unless Russia mobilizes a ton of reserves (and they may yet do so!), even their own analysts agree they can't actually occupy  . The author also cites Mosul, and I believe they are correct.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:42
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Cimber posted:I believe the logjam is getting all the bullets from Poland into Ukraine and from there to the front line troops. Logistics is _hard_ Speaking of logistics, Wendover uploaded a youtube detailing Russian one in general and in the conflict so fat https://youtu.be/b4wRdoWpw0w
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Mar 5, 2022 21:42
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uXs posted:The thing is, does the West even have that much ammunition? Nobody has been really preparing for war for the last decades. In terms of basic small arms ammo, yes, definitely. In terms of Javelins and NLAWS, I dunno.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:42
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Just Chamber posted:I'm sure the Russians who likely don't care if someone calls them Ivan, Rusky etc are happy you're offended on their behalf. And unless you want to say that "Tommy" is racist I think "racist stereotype" is reaching very far. If Britain ever puts troops into Ukraine during this war I hope no one will dare say "Tommy's sending in the troops", because that would be awful and clearly dehumanizing the Brits. And I really hope the pearl clutching battalion has never used the term 'Karen' to refer to middle aged white women.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:43
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sean10mm posted:In terms of basic small arms ammo, yes, definitely.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:43
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Chalks posted:The comment about Ukraine running out of ammunition etc seems surprising. Surely with western support they won't be running out of basic things like that. As far as I can tell, those comments are mostly political - in service of getting western nations to supply said ammunition.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:44
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...Where are people getting Russia has more modern "stuff" exactly? Reports say they are using walkie talkies and have limited access to NVG Like that little better armored tank that got captured/taken out anyway? ...Are some of us watching the same war? At this point besides artillery I would say tech is squarely on the side of the Ukranians so far. I have not been impressed with Russian "tech"  in the slightestIn Rubles Tank "upgrades": 5,000,000 Troop training: 25 Tech: 20 Logistics: 25 VDV: 150,000,000 Troll Farms: 200,000,000,000 Someone good at the economy help me budget this. My military is dying
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Mar 5, 2022 21:44
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OAquinas posted:(some cutting edge, at least the stuff that isn't from Germany) Huh? We don't know the exact model of Panzerfaust 3 they got, but it'll punch through ERA and can be launched from within buildings. And the Stingers are, well, Stingers. Only the Strelas are sketchy as gently caress.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:44
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Ghetto SuperCzar posted:Not close to an expert on Ukraine, and I'm trying to understand why a bunch of other leftists are towing the Russian line since none of it seems to have anything to do with socialism and the only explainable reason is "America is bad" (which, true) but holy gently caress a bunch of poor people are dying for both sides for seemingly stupid reasons. It's tempting when you encounter an argument that reads "Because of <X>, Ukraine is bad, therefor Russia is good" to take it at face value. But it's just as likely that someone has decided "Russia is good, therefor their frame <X> is correct, making Ukraine bad". Motivated reasoning is especially bad when a priming event occurs to greatly raise the salience of an issue people otherwise had no view on (or very diffuse priors); in this kind of information poor environment, people rapidly cobble together a worldview that minimizes cognitive dissonance, typically by going to trusted sources or trying to fit the new issue into an existing issue framework. In this particular case, if you're a sort of broadly anti-war DSA leftist, you probably have a worldview that the US and NATO are bad (and probably the EU as well), that the Soviet Union was more or less not bad (or not as bad as people believe), that foreign separatist movements are broadly good, and so it's very easy to accept Russia's propaganda view of the necessity of the war. You know, broadly, that the US has couped foreign regimes that don't get along with the US and replaced them with US-friendly regimes. It's fairly common for people on both the right and left to express strange degrees of empathy with foreign autocrats that they view as mapping onto their domestic politics -- I think a lot of people basically believe the means justify the ends and the goal of politics is to win and so having a process preference about democratic or liberty is pretty rare versus having a policy preference about which kind of policies should win. Of course this is deeply toxic because in this case it's not the left sympathizing with a foreign leftist dictator, it's the left sympathizing with a far-right dictator co-opting their framing, in a pretty transparent way. I think one key is that if you're listening to someone who is really authoritatively talking about domestic Ukrainian history over the last 75 years, you probably at least want to sanity check "is it likely this person knew any of what they were saying before two weeks ago" and if the answer is no, probably don't listen to them or take them seriously. Man Plan Canal fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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Mar 5, 2022 21:45
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Cimber posted:And I really hope the pearl clutching battalion has never used the term 'Karen' to refer to middle aged white women. I will bite the bullet and say that “Karen” is bad too. It isn’t a slur. But it isn’t good.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:45
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Kavros posted:In an alternate geopolitical situation americans started getting called Kyles Keiths seems more on brand for America.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:46
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Ghetto SuperCzar posted:After seeing that interview with the mayor who had Bandera portrait behind him I wanted to dive a little further into learning about how prevalent the far right is in Ukraine. It seems like the 2 biggest far right groups are the Svoboda political party and the Azov Battalion. Theres a number of other groups but they seem more fringe. After reading a number of sources, it sounds like Svoboda in around 2010 had about 10% of the national vote in parliamentary elections, which sounds real bad. But after Euromaidan, in 2014 that dropped to 4%, and in 2019 it dropped to 2% with no representation in parliament. It seems like that is going in a good direction already. It's because they are getting, and then repeating, Russian propaganda.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:46
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Djarum posted:No that is still a common thing even in Western aviation. Most pilots will have something called a "knee board" which they will have a note pad. A lot of commercial pilots have moved to iPads but in military aviation a note pad is still standard kit. Yeah it's really not an unusual thing to see. I'd imagine most most combat pilots have a set of hand-written notes while on mission even if they're relying on their avionics for most of it. I know at least in the UK they do a lot of navigation training where they time their track on a certain heading with visual landmarks to crosscheck against. All you need for that kind of navigation is a stopwatch, compass and a notepad with bearings/times. This is a pretty good video about planning a route using that technique, dude used to be a jet trainer in the RAF and now he makes youtube videos about how to fly a hawk in Microsoft flight sim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L68ACL5_N24
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Mar 5, 2022 21:46
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Nessus posted:The thing is that Putin does not have the One Ring and at a certain point if your army hates it and is starving and undersupplied, you can only beat them so hard. It is probably true that if Putin pulled back to the Donbass he could basically have such volume that I don't think Ukraine could drive him out, of course. That is true but that comes back to the cost. Especially with increased crackdowns we have no clear idea how far Putin can demand the Russian people go. At the end of the day Russia has already paid a heavy price and history shows that sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a drug for any nation. It comes down to if Putin can outlast Ukraine and unfortunatly the battles are being fought on Ukraine's soil. The profit will almost certainly not be worth the cost but that is why this entire war is so loving pointless and stupid. Either way it is the people of Russia and Ukraine who come out losers no matter what. There is no real victory here. Just a horrible mess and countless lives ruined.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:47
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Grape posted:Yeah I'm not sure this is "a thing". Yeah. We have to remember that for it to be a thing, we have to expect the inevitability that the same entities that have been running the war thus far and put the military in its current condition are going to solve the problem and fix the war. In truth, the exact sort of managerial entities that have run the war like this so far are the ones you should conclude may just be incapable of righting the ship, based on their already demonstrated ineptitude. We can't assume that there's an inevitability that the russian command structure even has the capacity to work out their current situation. Failures tend to cascade. So it's nothing we actually know one way or the other on. Another assumption is that they can power through just on sheer numbers, especially considering that numbers quickly just become mouths to feed and exhausted reserves to replace when they are operationally incapable of serving a proactive function. Even in antiquity, your own size could be your worst enemy.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:48
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| # ? May 25, 2024 06:49 |
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Ghetto SuperCzar posted:After seeing that interview with the mayor who had Bandera portrait behind him I wanted to dive a little further into learning about how prevalent the far right is in Ukraine. It seems like the 2 biggest far right groups are the Svoboda political party and the Azov Battalion. Theres a number of other groups but they seem more fringe. After reading a number of sources, it sounds like Svoboda in around 2010 had about 10% of the national vote in parliamentary elections, which sounds real bad. But after Euromaidan, in 2014 that dropped to 4%, and in 2019 it dropped to 2% with no representation in parliament. It seems like that is going in a good direction already. No I mean that's pretty much right on the money. As for why people are supporting the imperialist homophobe in the Kremlin? Some are genuine idiots who got suckered by Russian propaganda, some are so wrapped in anti-Americanism that they can't see beyond it, some are just very firm in the 'all Nazis are always bad and we shouldn't be helping a state that supports them in any way' camp. While I disagree in the specific context of Ukraine, a nation that has been steadily getting better since the revolution, I entirely understand that last point. However insignificant Azov and their ilk are they are still an organised Nazi group that we will be helping to arm, even if indirectly. It sucks, but it in no way delegitimises the entirety of the Ukrainian government or their struggle against Russia. I can't say for sure if Ukraine would continue getting better if they win, but given the horrific state of neo-nazism in Russia I'm very confident that the military occupation region formerly known as Ukraine would get worse. Plus, President Zelensky's defiant public image is catapulting him in to national hero status which is hopefully a mind-changer considering he's Jewish. Edit: Also a lot of people aren't picking any side, just standing back and saying 'both states are awful there are no good guys here'. Again, I think that's naive, but it's another angle of why people are posting against Ukraine. DaysBefore fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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