gradenko_2000 posted:

CODChimera posted:

wait so is the f35 good or bad

WaryWarren posted:

Coach Red Pill vs Lazerpig on Youtube right now!

Not So Fast posted:

I would rather read mlmp08 entire post history

BrotherJayne posted:

we're so glad you approve

lobster shirt posted:

the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a brick is a good dog with a gun

quote:

Ukrainian troops to train on Patriot system in Oklahoma
FILE - U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Cody Brown, right, with the 436th Aerial Port Squadron, checks pallets of 155 mm shells ultimately bound for Ukraine, April 29, 2022, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. The U.S. will send $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine in a massive package that will for the first time include a Patriot missile battery and precision guided bombs for their fighter jets, U.S. officials said Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022, as the Biden administration prepares to welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — About 100 Ukrainian troops will head to Oklahoma’s Fort Sill as soon as next week to begin training on the Patriot missile defense system, getting Kyiv closer to obtaining a long-sought protection against Russia continued missile attacks.

Ukraine has requested that the U.S. provide the Patriot surface-to-air guided missile defense system for months because it can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles. During his late December visit to the U.S., Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the battery would make a significant difference in bolstering Kyiv’s defenses against Russia’s invasion.

The number of Ukrainians coming to Fort Sill is approximately the number it takes to operate one battery, and they will focus on learning to operate and also maintain the Patriot, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday.

Kyiv’s decision to take troops off the battlefield to train across the Atlantic in the U.S. is unusual, although it has sent forces for short-term training at European bases for other more complex systems it has received, such as on the longer-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

Patriot training normally can take several months, but “the longer those troops are off the line, they’re not actually engaged in combat,” Ryder said, so the training will be shortened.

Fort Sill was selected because it already runs Patriot training schools, Ryder said.

The U.S. pledged one Patriot battery in December as part of one of several large military assistance packages it has provided Ukraine in recent weeks. Last week Germany pledged an additional Patriot battery.

Each Patriot battery consists of a truck-mounted launching system with eight launchers that can hold up to four missile interceptors each, a ground radar, a control station and a generator. The Army said it currently has 16 Patriot battalions.

The Patriot batteries will complement a variety of air defense systems that both the U.S. and NATO partners have pledged to Ukraine, as it faces an evolving barrage of missiles and drones against its civilian population and infrastructure from Russia in the nearly 11-month old conflict. In the last few months Germany has pledged four IRIS-T air defense systems; the U.S. has also pledged eight mid-range National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and Avenger air defense systems.

The training at Fort Sill was first reported by CNN.

Lostconfused posted:

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1612856500388782080

mawarannahr posted:

let the patriot games commence

https://apnews.com/article/zelenskyy-politics-6bb6e815e77b0d6b83590d344eb884bb

gradenko_2000 posted:

In the first 10 years of operation. the F-16 was costing the American Taxpayer around 18 million per airframe. 143 had been destroyed, and 71 of its pilots were dead.

mlmp08 posted:

Meh, my posts are about 3-4% of the thread by postcount, tops. A small portion of the content. But gonna hit the road soon, and I don’t post while driving so you’re free for a little bit!

euphronius posted:

What does "we are a nation now" even mean

quote:

I believe the results of the year are catastrophic. The special military operation, which was planned to be quick and effective, turned out not to be quick, not to be effective, and turned into a long-term military operation. There are reports of tens of thousands of deaths on the part of Ukraine and Russia, but in fact there are already apparently hundreds of thousands of deaths. Millions of refugees. In fact, there is a civil war within the Russian people, unleashed by the hands of the United States and the West.

At the same time, there has been a huge qualitative shift in attitudes toward Russia in Ukraine. If earlier the anti-Russian sentiments in the Ukrainian society amounted to 10 percent, then under the influence of propaganda they became 15 percent, and then 20-25 percent, then after the beginning of UAS they reached about 70-80 percent. The Ukrainian political regime has been consolidated on an anti-Russian basis. This, too, is a disastrous consequence.

The Russian army has effectively lost its status as the second largest army in the world, if we exclude nuclear weapons. In the eyes of the world, it is judged to be extremely ineffective and incapable of carrying out combat missions. I do not think so, by the way. The problem is not that the Russian army is weak, but that the Ukrainian army has become very strong. The Ukrainian army is unique because it has a Russian soldier (one of the best in the world), a fascist officer (because the US special services have fascinated the officer corps, and he is the skeleton of the army) and American and British generals who run the AFU. Even if they are Ukrainian citizens, they usually have second passports and receive their salaries in dollars or pounds sterling.

In geopolitical terms, too, we see not a transition to a multipolar world, but, on the contrary, a reset of the unipolar world, a significant strengthening of the United States, which has shown its enormous power, efficiency, ability to control political regimes. Western civilization is now more consolidated than ever around the United States. And Russia turned out to be weak. In fact, the Americans defeated the Russian army at the hands of the Ukrainian army in many places. The Russian army was forced to abandon millions of people and hundreds of settlements in the Kiev, Poltava, Sumy, Chernigov, Kharkov, and Kherson regions. Repression fell on these people because Ukraine has a real terrorist regime.

Yes. Russia is five times larger than Ukraine. Most of Ukraine's population could potentially be pro-Russian because they are Russian people. But to achieve this, we need to arm the army, go ahead and defeat the Ukrainian army, establish a tough, effective occupation regime, and cure the people. The people of Ukraine must be treated as members of a totalitarian sect who have been dragged there by force. But since they are already members of a totalitarian sect, they now convince themselves that being in that sect is the right thing to do.

mawarannahr posted:

let the patriot games commence

https://apnews.com/article/zelenskyy-politics-6bb6e815e77b0d6b83590d344eb884bb

OctaMurk posted:

say what u wanna say about the f35 but it aint no f104

OctaMurk posted:

say what u wanna say about the f35 but it aint no f104

Lostconfused posted:

Ok, now lets read what he really said. Actually not, that interview is way too long. It seems to machine translate pretty easily so you can just do that if you want, but like I don't think he says anything new. Just another example of how "narratives" go.

https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/579007

Gresh posted:

So whats everyone think of the Bradley's? I think those things have only ever been in combat in largely flat, open terrain against ridiculously inferior and under-trained forces. Are they going to be able to get to put up a fight or get taken out very quickly by modernized Russian T-72s/T-90Ms/artillery?

Also, whats the primary reason for not supplying Ukraine with heavy modern tanks like the Leopard and Abrams? Is it mostly due to escalation fears or do those things have sensitive technology in them that Western policy makers are afraid of being captured by Russia much like the reaper drone?

Gresh posted:

https://twitter.com/TobiAyodele/status/1612910896837173255

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1612906763677737001

inshallah

Gresh posted:

So whats everyone think of the Bradley's? I think those things have only ever been in combat in largely flat, open terrain against ridiculously inferior and under-trained forces. Are they going to be able to get to put up a fight or get taken out very quickly by modernized Russian T-72s/T-90Ms/artillery?

Also, whats the primary reason for not supplying Ukraine with heavy modern tanks like the Leopard and Abrams? Is it mostly due to escalation fears or do those things have sensitive technology in them that Western policy makers are afraid of being captured by Russia much like the reaper drone?

Starsfan posted:

some speculation in this thread (that aligns with the commentary from other observers) that Soledar changing hands means that Bakhmut will be impossible for the Ukrainians to supply (and any Ukrainian forces left in Bakhmut are going to be under direct attack from both the north and the south), and if they leave Bakhmut than Sivers'k to the north would also be vulnerable for the same reason as the Russians could then come at it from two opposite directions.

Seems like Ukraine will be pushed back to their last obvious defense line in the Donetsk region along the roadway from Slovyansk through Kramatorsk and down to Kostyantynivka very soon, but I guess there's always the possibility that they invest huge resources to try and re-capture the situation in Bakhmut and hold out longer.

I don't know what larger conclusions can be made over how things seemed to have really turned against the Ukrainians holding these fortress towns in the last couple days. Maybe they finally came to their senses and realized there's no loving point in continuously rotating in more fresh soldiers to hold a position being attacked from 3 sides and marginal strategic value in the grand scheme of things.

Endman posted:

I mean the point of a lot of this is to give the Ukrainians a toy to see how it performs in that environment.

The PR boost that comes from giving them a tank is just a nice cherry on top.

OctaMurk posted:

say what u wanna say about the f35 but it aint no f104

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Bradleys are more-or-less BMP-2s, the Ukrainians are going to use them the same way and they're going to lose them the same way

Leopard 2s and Abramses are really expensive active-service vehicles, so giving them to Ukraine means getting really expensive replacements. It will also look bad whenever they blow up, because there's plenty of stuff in Ukraine that blows up modern tanks.

Ukraine had an army running on ex-Soviet equipment, so any addition of Western vehicles adds a bunch of parts incompatibilities and training demands that makes everything more chaotic and expensive. No '90s tank is sensitive equipment at this point, it's just a matter of cost and PR.

DancingShade posted:

Repairs and maintenance may not be factors with the numbers of anti tank weapons in the region. I'm thinking more use once, maybe twice if lucky, then ask the paypigs for more.

DancingShade posted:

Repairs and maintenance may not be factors with the numbers of anti tank weapons in the region. I'm thinking more use once, maybe twice if lucky, then ask the paypigs for more.

Frosted Flake posted:

That becomes a PR issue as the Abrams/Challenger/Leopard 2 still have a myth of invincibility. The benefit is saying “If Ukraine had these they’d be advancing on Rostov next week” but actually delivering them runs real risks and bears real costs.

Ardennes posted:

The West has talked a lot about “unlimited support” but they really have showed it, there are hard limits it seems in how willing they are to go. The Ukrainians need 4th generation fighters like the Gripen with long range missiles but who knows how that will happen along with artillery.

According to YouTube tank celebrity “the chieftain”, the US could push the entire Russian army back out of Ukraine with one armored and one infantry division.