Lostconfused posted:

So it's just power steering for planes? Did they decide that it need that they needed a marketing gimmick name like power steering?

Majorian posted:

https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1602831000123445249

lol lmao

Regarde Aduck posted:

it's using mouse controls in war thunder arcade flight

lobster shirt posted:

i still wanna know if the eurofighter is good or not

Slavvy posted:

What was the last good war machine built in Britain

lobster shirt posted:

i still wanna know if the eurofighter is good or not

AnimeIsTrash posted:

just play project wingman

Slavvy posted:

What was the last good war machine built in Britain

lobster shirt posted:

i still wanna know if the eurofighter is good or not

Frosted Flake posted:

FV433 Abbot

Majorian posted:

https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1602831000123445249

lol lmao

Regarde Aduck posted:

it's using mouse controls in war thunder arcade flight

paul_soccer12 posted:

Everyone's an expert on Ukraine's rivers and seasonal climate all of a sudden

Regarde Aduck posted:

it's using mouse controls in war thunder arcade flight

Cuttlefush posted:

The actual scary part of all that is that a lot of the control systems were prototyped in matlab/simulink and then almost certainly just spat out by matlab's patented simulink compiler for people who just want to fly already.

Slavvy posted:

I was unaware that inherent instability had become the norm in fighter jets, is that just more MIC grift in the hopes of somehow dodging supersonic a2a missiles?

Slavvy posted:

Everything should be swing wing. Airliners, cargo planes, submarines etc

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

TEXT 1: Der Totale Krieg in the XXI century?

Over the months of active combat western military aid to Ukraine is experiencing significant structural changes, the essence of which often slips by an inattentive observer.

It is expected that with every phase of the conflict the volume of aid will only increase with the aim of strengthening the AFU, but this statement is only partially true – a certain increase in aid is primarily related to compensating for the Ukrainian army's losses in military equipment, supplies and material, but not a buildup of capabilities.

Europe and USA from the first days of the war worked from a very specific sort of logic, the essence of which was that after inflicting a certain percentage of losses in manpower and equipment on the Russian Federation, it was assumed that Moscow must give up its plans and begin peaceful negotiations. This is the reason for partial shipments, their objective was to counter the superiority of russian army in one specific area or another: tanks, artillery, seaborne power.

The problem of this approach is in the very logic behind it, that the infamous “number of casualties” can even have any sort of influence on Kremlin or the internal situation of RF. Western planners threw out the fact, that should have been considered if only from the point of view of military history – Russia is a country that's rather insensitive to casualties. You can laugh at it, argue against it, consider it insignificant, but to build a strategy, but to build a strategy by ignoring these basic principles of national psychology, turned out to not only be absurd but also a fatal mistake.

From the point of view of military art, Russia was always a country that slowly reacted to rapidly changing situations and poorly oriented itself in the conditions of war, the character of which lies in rapid decision making. Here the examples of ruso-japanese or soviet-finish war are relevant – confronted with a strong opponent, the country reacted too slowly to the inflicted defeat, and receiving more or less acceptable conditions for peace, preferred to withdraw. But sometimes a different scenario developed: some way or another Russia reformed and came to a more convenient way of war for her – war of attrition.

After the first six months of the russo-ukrainian conflict Moscow, not suffering serious (for you they might seem catastrophic, but ask yourself – does Kremlin, the only actor in all the processes of RF, thinks of them as such?) economic losses or losses in resources, came to this historically developed model.

This fact had direct influence on the military aid to Ukraine from the NATO bloc countries, that were forced to adapt to the real scale of war of attrition under the conditions of their limited military industrial capacity.

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

TEXT 2: Campaign of attrition

During the summer-fall period NATO actively provided in the interests of ukrainian army a significant quantity of artillery shells and tactical rockets, that provided AFU superiority over RF forces: a collected database of military infrastructure targets along with significantly expanded arsenal of precision guided weapons allowed the ukrainian army to conduct a series of successful offensive operations at Kharkiv, Izum, and Liman. Precision strikes on russian supply depots, combined with increasing supplies of traditional artillery systems, provided ukraine with the necessary superiority in firepower.

During the realisation of these operations it was probably expected that Moscow will request negotiations upon their conclusion, and there were no plans for continuation of high intensity combat. For this reason Europe and USA freely provided Kiev with weapons from their own reserves: for example, more than 1 million 155mm shells alone were delivered between July and October. By November western arsenals were significantly depleted without possibility of being quickly refilled – subsequent audits revealed, that to fully restore the reserves of the alliance 3 to 5 years were required not only due to lack of necessary industrial capacity, but also because of their complete liquidation in some instances (this for example happened with the german SMArt 155).

The reason is simple – Europe and USA even during the years of the Cold War actively searched for ways to reduce their military expenditure. If USSR for its entire existence actively pursued the principle of «guns before butter», then western populations categorically refused to make such sacrifices. Maintaining the operational readiness of the armed forces is in itself an extremely costly and even unprofitable enterprise, then provision of a strategic and mobilisation reserve from an economic point of view looks like a real “black hole”. After the fifties USA undertook cardinal measures, completely getting rid of the concept of “mobilisation reserve” – all of the military reserves in the country were meant to not last more than half a year of extremely intense combat operations in Europe. After this period if was assumed, NATO and WP must reach some kind of peaceful agreement – in the worst case scenario America would begin developing new military industries, over the course of 5 to 8 years (we are of course talking about conventional war scenarios)…

At this moment the events are developing along a completely different path – Russia started the process of mobilisation. The restored manpower of the armies changed the logistic structures (the practice of creating large supply dumps disappeared), at the same time the capabilities of the rocket and artillery forces were restored weapons from the strategic reserves. At the same time the increase in russian military industrial capacity can’t be ignored – there’s a whole series of interesting stories, related to deliveries of european heavy industrial machinery to russia after 24th of february of this year, to be exact during the period of sanction regime. At present russian artillery forces returned to the tempo of firing 20 000 projectiles per day.

In short, not only did the conflict didn’t start de-escalating – it changed to attrition warfare, which can’t be considered desirable even for the powerful western economies for a number of reasons.

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

ТEXT 3: Lend-Lease and why it didn’t happen?

Since the start of fall many correctly expected an intensification of shipments of western weapons for AFU. This step seemed logical and reasonable – by that time the Ukrainian army demonstrated that it can not only defend, but also advance, NATO countries had half a year to prepare and organise the process, to increase the volume of military aid.

But it didn’t happen.

As mentioned previously, North Atlantic alliance strived to reduce military expenditure, and with the conclusion of the cold war this tendency became even stronger – NATO defacto became a military industrial hegemon, and in general did not have any need for any military reserves. The volume of which was reduced to 1 month of intense combat operations, military factories – liquidated or reformed, funding for defence organisations cutdown.

For example, let’s talk about heavy armor.

Currently Germany can produce 100 “Leopard-2” tanks in… 65 months. On top of that FRG can’t produce tanks at the same time SAU – PzH 2000 using the tank chassis “Leo” (bears mentioning that Kiev signed a contract with Berlin for a delivery of 100 SAU – and according to the agreement it will take over 5 years to produce them).

In USA the situation is slightly different, but there is no production of new tank corps (existing reserves are needed by USA for its own needs, since they’re the basis for producing newly modified machines). American can restore and modernise old “Abrams” at a tempo of 30 machines per month at present moment, 60 machines by increasing the financing of the production line, 88 - with cardinal expansion of the only tank factory in the country (this is publicly available information, presented in the budget documents of USA).

In general the situation of other (excluding military auto transportation and various types of aviation) western mobilisation capabilities exist in a similar state, just like tanks – they only function to meet peacetime needs. Nothing like colossal reserves have existed within the alliance for decades, due to which it is impossible to supply the Ukrainian million man army decisively (considering that the most conservative calculations show that the armies are losing 1% of their equipment in a single day of combat operations). Nobody is planning to make a cardinal change to this situation – on it’s own the expansion of military industrial capacity is very expensive and takes at no less than 5 years – and by the year 2027 it might not even matter. NATO countries themselves do not need excess military capacity or reserves – the opposite, the complicated situation of global economy demands a reduction of expenditures (Britain, downsizing its already meagre assets, is an example of that). In conclusion, Europe and USA are having difficulties finding equipment to outfit Ukraine, and this is exactly why Ukraine is receiving old Soviet machinery, or old M113 and police armoured transports.

Nevertheless, NATO countries not only need to maintain the functions of Ukrainian army but also expand the deliveries – and in this instance a great help turned out to be the burdensome legacy of socialism..

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

ТEXT 4: The arsenal of democracy with communist roots

Czechia can historically be called one of the key arms forges of Europe. It was that way during the epoch of Austria-Hungary, and Soviet Union. A significant portions of exported soviet weapons systems, for example to, Africa and Near East, were produced in Czechoslovakia, which thanks to colossal volume of orders had the opportunity to maintain a massive and developed military industry.

But after the collapse of WP, and then USSR, czech and slovak military factories were left with nothing to do. It’s possible to assume that this is where their story ends, but it turns out the czechs were not only far smarter and far sighted than their new partners in western europe, but also their former allies in soviet republics. Factories were mothballed until better days would come around again, and spend decades waiting for their moment.

Of Course in this question it’s meaningless to discuss only the production of czechia and slovakia – we’re also talking about Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania. Military factories of the above mentioned factories were delivering military supplies to the Ukrainian army from the very start of the conflict, and continue to expand their capabilities (for example, polish government’s industrial concern PGZ Increases production of missiles for man-portable air defence systems from 300 to 1000 units per day). Czechia, ironically, turned out to be the only, turned out to be the only NATO country capable of restoring and modernising more than 100 units of heavy military equipment per month: even in spring, the tempo of work at Czech defence factories allowed for 150 tanks and 150 BMPs/BPVs to be shipped to Ukraine within 30 days.

Over the course of summer factories of Western Europe increased production of spare parts of soviet artillery (including new barrels), and also ammunition types of 73-мм, 122-мм, 125-мм and 152-мм. This allowed in large part to improve the supply of Ukrainian army, however the situation is far from being able to meet even 50% of the demands of a AFU artillery brigade.

It should be noted, that in former WP countries the full cycle of weapons production was completely destroyed – they can successfully repair and restore large quantities of soviet type machinery, but not produce it from scratch. Production of new weapon, as the examples of polish SAU “Krab” and slovakian SAU “Zuzana” show, takes up a significant amount of time and is only possible in limited runs. In everything the amount of work produced by defence factories of western europe is colossal: they fix banged up machines, bring them out from storage, restore machines from the graveyard, located in ukraine, modernise soviet hardware, produce mortars, recoilless guns, munitions, bullets, anti-mine equipment, anti-air rockets (if it weren't for them, ukrainian AA would’ve already ran out of parts).

The trend, in a word, is obvious – replacement of soviet era weapon systems in Ukraine isn’t happening not just in foreseeable months, but years. However it should be noted that western europe can’t meet the entirety of demands of AFU: ukrainian army is chronically experiencing an “ammunition famine”, a lack of personal firearms, light armoured vehicles (this is a separate topic, as pick-ups and off-road vehicles have long been the main means of transport in the AFU, which has a corresponding impact on the number of personnel losses), and also military aviation. Considering the amount of funding for the Czech and Polish MIC, the situation may change next year – In any case, Ukraine will be supplied predominantly by the former Soviet bloc countries with soviet-type equipment.

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

ТEXT 5: Wager on preparation

Besides mobilising military industry, the western NATO bloc has began realising another important program of providing aid to the Ukrainian army. It’s related to preparing and retraining soldiers and officers of the ukrainian armed forces, as well as educating the mobilised personal.

Perhaps we should begin from the end. Questions of preparing recruits for full scale combat operations are in general a rather complicated and useless topic, around which discussions in military circles have been going for decades. AFU are no exception to this process – ukrainian general staff was unable to create a single unified standard and program for preparing conscripts. In of if itself the process on the scale of an army the process is more like a patchwork blanket – in some units preparation is handled by experienced sergeants, somewhere contract soldiers, somewhere – police officers, and somewhere not at all. All of this, obviously, has a rather negative effect on combat readiness, ability to command, and how steady they are in combat . Under this conditions outside help was necessary, because of this the countries of British Commonwealth organised a training mission for new ukrainian recruits.

At the same time Britain, already in spring, began to realise a program of retraining ukrainian cadres, which formed the core of a striking force, most recently employed during the advance on Kharkiv-Izum combat operations.

This, however, turned out to not be enough – it become obvious in the fall period, the ukrainian army can successfully advance in areas with extremely weakened and sparse defensive lines, but can’t produce breakthroughs against defensive echelons, which AFU encountered in Kherson. A large part of which was caused by inconsistency in preparedness and unit cohesion, which cause NATO countries to announce a whole round of various training and education missions for ukrainian recruits.

Majority of the announced programs are aimed at retraining active units, part – on training specialists (medics, snipers, sappers), as well as individual courses for officer. In general no less than 50 000 have to pass through European polygons – an impressive number, which can be thought of as the core of several attack brigades. The aim is obvious – at this given moment western countries are unable to provide ukraine with superiority in equipment or personal over russian forces, but they can do it by increasing the quality of ukrainian personal.

Either way, how likely these plans are to be realised in relation to the situation around Bakhmut will be more apparent closer to the end of the winter period.

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

ТЕXT 6: Western military aid - summary and conclusion

As mentioned in the above texts, countries of North Atlantic Alliance are focused their services around two key programmes of military aid to Ukraine: first is directly related to expanding the military industrial capabilities of western europe, second – second preparing a significant number of AFU servicemen.

Obviously, Europe and USA are assuming, that the conflict will end no later than fall 2023, because of which they’re not preparing any cardinal measures, related to rearming the ukrainian forces and mobilising their own military industrial potential. Within the framework of this logic, their actions are more or less understandable: it’s enough to streamline the production of expendable material for another year of combat operations, supplies for soviet military hardware and its repair, and a focus on individual equipment and training of AFU personal. The lack of other capabilities, it appears, will be supplement by civilian sources (ukrainian army received over 13,000 pick-ups, SUVs, trucks in deliveries).

For example, the programmes previously announced by USA about expanding the production of 155-mm munitions are because of the desire to increase delivers to Ukraine, but to refill their own reserves and that of NATO allies, but also to ensure uninterrupted arms sales. Because of the military aid provided to Ukraine, USA was forced to delay the fulfilment of Taiwan’s military contracts this summer, as well as losing a few clients, as with, for example, Poland. Military officials in Warsaw have seriously reconsidered their US military purchases (tanks, tactical rocket complexes, SAU) in favour of South Korea, which can produce supplies and equipment much faster than America.

It should also be added, that Ukraine is receiving significant resources to expand its own military enterprises, which are located on the territory of the country, and also in western europe (several ukrainian military enterprises have organised their operations in czechia and poland). At the very least this allowed the ukrainian armed forces to repair and restore their own air force equipment, produce their own drones, electronic warfare equipment and some munitions. Because of the funding of domestic defence industry Kiev is also working on a number of promising operations-tactical level weapons, some of which, probably, we will see in the first half of 2023.

In conclusions I will note, that in the event, combat operations do not end in 2023, allies of the ukrainian government will be forced to start developing serial production of some weapons to resupply and reduce some of the deficit in equipment of the ukrainian army. The rate at which light armoured vehicles and unarmored auto transport are being knocked out at this moment are close to the level of world war 2 – with this, the widely used in NATO MRAP type personal carriers are ill-suited to the types of terrain present in Ukraine, and it is not practical to use them to meet the needs of AFU on a permanent basis.

@atomiccherry 💯

lobster shirt posted:

i still wanna know if the eurofighter is good or not

Majorian posted:

https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1602831000123445249

lol lmao

quote:

I do not think this is an accident. This is intentional and is proof that Elon Musk is not-so-silently helping the Kremlin undermine Pro-Ukrainian voices after he declared his capitulation to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

Lostconfused posted:

The problem of this approach is in the very logic behind it, that the infamous “number of casualties” can even have any sort of influence on Kremlin or the internal situation of RF. Western planners threw out the fact, that should have been considered if only from the point of view of military history – Russia is a country that's rather insensitive to casualties. You can laugh at it, argue against it, consider it insignificant, but to build a strategy, but to build a strategy by ignoring these basic principles of national psychology, turned out to not only be absurd but also a fatal mistake.

Lostconfused posted:

The reason is simple – Europe and USA even during the years of the Cold War actively searched for ways to reduce their military expenditure. If USSR for its entire existence actively pursued the principle of «guns before butter», then western populations categorically refused to make such sacrifices.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Turtle Watch posted:

This was a lot of words and when I got to this part my brain shut off, maybe the rest makes sense but I need time to recover

lobster shirt posted:

i still wanna know if the eurofighter is good or not