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Warbadger posted:Yes, someone in the thread was claiming that. Are you actually saying they're claiming schools are a legit infrastructure target? People can claim Russia's missiles are inaccurate without it being some attempt to excuse Russian warcrimes like you seem to be interpreting it as. Nor is anyone claiming that even if Russia is indiscriminately targeting civilian areas with inaccurate missiles to make their other strikes more likely to hit that that somehow makes it okay. Bremen fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 04:04
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Warbadger posted:Yes, someone in the thread was claiming that. You should re-read what you quoted.
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Jan 16, 2023 04:11
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MikeC posted:All this talk of MBTs and poo poo doesn't really matter. The poster that said that 12 tanks won't do much is spot on. Unless the OSINT guys are off by orders of magnitude, they have the tanks they need. The question is whether they have enough Russian ammunition for all those tanks. If they don't then they to rely on ammo shipments from abroad then they need to change out their tank fleet wholesale and have the Americans ship them all the ammunition. 12 tanks, 60 tanks, or 100 tanks in that scenario is peanuts if the ammunition situation is chronic. More to the point, is more tanks going to actually help? Western MBTs have more bells and whistles and have better protection but a tank is a tank. The real question is how long will it take for the Ukrainians to increase the number of high capability units that can actually make use of all of these tanks and infantry tracks that can change this from a war of grinding attrition to one of movement where they can expel the Russians without grinding for every street corner. If the answer is not in the near future then sending Challengers or Abrams or Leopards or what have you is pointless. The West is better off just building and supplying them with infinite artillery systems and drones and helping them win the grinding war instead. This is wrong. They don't say "a tank is a tank" to mean that all tanks are literally the same therefore it doesn't matter which ones you get as long as you get something. It's just that 'a tank is a tank' refers to the minimum quality of a tank. Even bad ones are worth having just because of what they can do. You still want good tanks, which is why, as others said, Ukraine has been asking for the good tanks. Kchama fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 06:41
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Kchama posted:This is wrong. They say "a tank is a tank" to mean that all tanks are literally the same therefore it doesn't matter which ones you get as long as you get something. And some of those bells and whistles make a substantial difference. Ammo compartments that can cook off without killing the whole crew would be #1, followed by good night vision. I'll say better armor is a significant plus as well, but less so than the first 2 since there will always be a scenario where Russia will have weapons on hand to defeat even the best armor. Relying more on NATO for ammo, parts and fuel for these tanks is a significant price to get these advantages, but Ukraine is doing that even for the tanks they've had the whole time, so effectively it's not much difference. Really the fact that the line has been crossed thus opening the doors to more NATO tanks going forward is the most substantial effect this will have on the war effort. Abrams don't have to be supplied, though it would still be nice, the potential volume of available tanks just increased dramatically.
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Jan 16, 2023 07:06
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It , there appears to be an increasingly broad realization among the senior leadership that programmers don't grow on trees. That is causing some uneasy conflicts of interest for the pro-war wing, and for loudmouths like Volodin or Medvedev as well. They are surprisingly easy to export to Turkiye thought.  It's amazing just how hard Russia hosed itself with the war and mobilization.
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Jan 16, 2023 08:22
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Xarn posted:They are surprisingly easy to export to Turkiye thought. Turkiye stopped issuing residence permits to russians so they'll soon have to go elsewhere
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Jan 16, 2023 09:14
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I'm surprised no country has tried to brain drain Russian middle class. Countries bordering Russia might not want to risk it in case of another Tzar appears and does "Russia is where Russians live" Casus Belli tour. But France or Austria could score some valuable workforce for minor quiet incentive.
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Jan 16, 2023 09:32
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Randarkman posted:Saying strategic bombing never worked is kind of a fallacy I think. Read a book about my small Belgian city during WWII. Allies bombed it several times with hundreds of planes. The strategic targets where a railway hub and the workshops next to it. But they often missed y literal miles. They used a fuckton of incendiary bombs too, for shits and giggles. By the end, of the 17000 (many historically valuable) houses, 9000 were destroyed (including V1, V2 damage by butt hurt nazis), hundreds of civilians died. The railway operations where not that disrupted by it and everybody in the town was forced to clean up the damage. The damaged factories and workshops, were immediately moved to other nearby locations. The workers who lost their job were forced by the nazis on trains to go work in Germany. Some of the most damage to the railroads was done by Belgian engineers, who blew up bridges during their retreat at the beginning of the war. I remember reading about similar raids in France, where after several unsuccessful bombings trying to destroy a factory, causing a lot of dead civilians, a member of the resistance just blew it up. Talking about the dead and destruction caused by allied bombing remained a taboo to this day, for obvious reasons. But maybe that gave the people who believed in strategic bombing too much leeway to keep claiming that it works.
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Jan 16, 2023 10:00
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This is not a useful conversation as long as 'strategic bombing' is being used as a term to cover everything from random area bombardment of urban housing to precision strikes on critical infrastructure. Nor is strategic bombing something that anyone seriously believes is a magic button that wins wars by itself. If the ability to strike strategic targets deep behind the frontlines was not effective then the US, Russia and China wouldn't be in an arms race right now on long range precision strike capability, Iran and DPRK wouldn't be massing as many medium range cruise missiles as they can build, and Ukraine wouldn't be calling for ATACMs every chance they get.
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Jan 16, 2023 10:41
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alex314 posted:I'm surprised no country has tried to brain drain Russian middle class. Countries bordering Russia might not want to risk it in case of another Tzar appears and does "Russia is where Russians live" Casus Belli tour. But France or Austria could score some valuable workforce for minor quiet incentive. I work for a university. It is encouraged to help colleagues get out of Russia, but from what I've been hearing it has gotten harder to leave. Russia did lose a ton of IT people in the early stages.
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Jan 16, 2023 10:44
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alex314 posted:I'm surprised no country has tried to brain drain Russian middle class. Countries bordering Russia might not want to risk it in case of another Tzar appears and does "Russia is where Russians live" Casus Belli tour. But France or Austria could score some valuable workforce for minor quiet incentive. There's a miryad reasons ranging from "helping russians looks bad on tv" to the fact that at one point they will start asking questions about how Europe bankrolled putin for 20 years and directly contributed to his regime having killed off everything democratic
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Jan 16, 2023 10:46
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Alchenar posted:This is not a useful conversation as long as 'strategic bombing' is being used as a term to cover everything from random area bombardment of urban housing to precision strikes on critical infrastructure. Nor is strategic bombing something that anyone seriously believes is a magic button that wins wars by itself. Strategic bombing has a clear definition, which covers none of these things, except the hypothetical use of ICBMs for a nuclear strike.
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Jan 16, 2023 11:09
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steinrokkan posted:Strategic bombing has a clear definition, which covers none of these things, except the hypothetical use of ICBMs for a nuclear strike. I think people are confusing "strategic bombing" versus "tactical bombing" and "precision bombing", perhaps due to the misleading word choice of "strategic" for that term. More properly it should be "indiscriminate area bombing" instead of "strategic bombing". To be honest until the Ukraine War I also thought "strategic bombing" meant "bombing with a strategy in mind" and not "bombing randomly with no particular goal except causing wanton destruction." If you asked me a year ago I would have considered bombing the Kerch Bridge to be under the umbrella of a "strategic bombing attack", since it fits that term colloquially but not at all technically.
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Jan 16, 2023 12:14
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nutri_void posted:There's a miryad reasons ranging from "helping russians looks bad on tv" to the fact that at one point they will start asking questions about how Europe bankrolled putin for 20 years and directly contributed to his regime having killed off everything democratic Lol. Europe is busy buttering up Qatar for that sweet natural gas (or was until the EU parliament bribery scandal), while the US is not only funding the Saudis, it's giving direct military aid to help them in their own mini-genocide in Yemen. Nobody is afraid of some questions being asked about the EU buying oil and gas from Russia.
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Jan 16, 2023 12:31
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Saladman posted:I think people are confusing "strategic bombing" versus "tactical bombing" and "precision bombing", perhaps due to the misleading word choice of "strategic" for that term. More properly it should be "indiscriminate area bombing" instead of "strategic bombing". 'Terror bombing' was a synonym of 'strategic bombing' in WW2, which is what people are talking about when they say 'strategic bombing'. Victory through destroying enemy morale by wanton destruction is the strategy that 'strategic bombing' refers to. It was a euphemistic way of describing "just bomb civilians until they give".
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Jan 16, 2023 12:44
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As the linked essay explains even precision bombing of military/industrial infrastructure doesn't have war winning outcomes because: 1. Your enemy probably has supporting industrial infrastructure outside its borders and unless you want to massively expand the conflict those can't be bombed. 2. Industrial infrastructure becomes much more hardened and dispersed in response to bombing campaigns 3. The best evidence is that it creates only short term political pressure, basically if you're already at the treaty stage of winning it helps you win more.
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Jan 16, 2023 13:37
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mlmp08 posted:You should re-read what you quoted. You mean where posters above the quoted post are discussing the purpose/reasoning behind the numerous residential strikes? The discussion where reasons are being given for these residential buildings being struck, mentioning the inability of the kh-22 to target specific buildings in a city as an explanation and even calling it random? The discussion in which immediately before the quoted post we have the little gem: "I’ve read some theories online that say that these buildings were all near legitimate targets and the missiles hit them due to poor quality guidance systems or that some high ranking UAF official lived there and this was an attempt to kill them."? So when the user says "By all accounts, they are just missing other civilian infrastructure they are trying to destroy." it certainly sounds like he's saying the residential strikes are just cases of missing other targets. Which is certainly not the consensus "by all accounts" and while the poster did imply some of the "missed" targets are not entirely legitimate themselves it's still pushing the claim that these types of strikes are accidental. Bremen posted:Nor is anyone claiming that even if Russia is indiscriminately targeting civilian areas with inaccurate missiles to make their other strikes more likely to hit that that somehow makes it okay. Ok? We had somebody claiming exactly that minus the "somehow makes it okay" bit, I just said that it's a very unlikely and impractical reason to mix a small number of old, inaccurate into a raid and took issue with calling them "decoys" as though they had a practical purpose for being there besides hitting something and blowing it up as part of the raid. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 13:59
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I wonder how this will affect Germany's willingness to offer heavy equipment to Ukraine? Would a new defence minister be more likely to be able to send tanks to Ukraine or are German social attitudes towards this sort of thing more likely to be a deciding factor? BBC news: Christine Lambrecht: German defence minister resigns after blunders https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64288267
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Jan 16, 2023 14:05
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StarBegotten posted:I wonder how this will affect Germany's willingness to offer heavy equipment to Ukraine? It’s Scholz calling the shots. Politically, defence ministry for Germany is where they send the fall guys or other undesirable politicians.
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Jan 16, 2023 14:09
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The far more interesting question is if it leads to a full cabinet reshuffle. The liberals have been quite loud about defense, but I doubt they want to actually give up a ministry to head the MoD. Finding a new minister is going to be somewhat fraught, so it has the potential of a governmental crisis. However, Scholz, for all his Merkelism and doing everything slowly behind closed doors, may just decide to get the thing over with. Germany has already shipped heavy equipment to Ukraine, so nothing will change in that respect. The post is primarily important in unfucking the procurement system. Defense ministers not serving their full term is not at all unusual, FWIW.
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Jan 16, 2023 14:15
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Warbadger posted:Words When you insert “legitimate” or add “makes it okay” to someone else’s words, which do not exist in what you quoted them writing, it does not assist whatever argument you are trying to make. As for kh-22s, yes, they are inaccurate vs buildings, inaccurate to the point of being criminally indiscriminate to fire into cities. If a force knows full well that the round they choose to employ often misses entirely or is experimenting with new settings but fires into cities full of civilians, that is indiscriminate killing. RUSI and the US government have both publicly stated that the kh-22 is an inaccurate weapon and part of an indiscriminate campaign.
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Jan 16, 2023 14:37
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpx7TWc58PI Small arms fire, explosions, one sequence with a burned out BMP (armored vehicle) but no bodies visible, some harsh language and slurs.Civ Div is an American who has volunteered in Iraq and Syria and--for the past year--in Ukraine. This video does a good job demonstrating why armored vehicles are still viable and valuable on a modern battlefield. A few things stood out to me:
For anyone curious about what controlled chaos in contact looks like, this is a good example. Re: Strategic Bombing Other may or may not find this interesting, but in the late 1990's West Point had an entire section in one class about just and unjust war. The conclusion was generally that the strategic bombing used by the Allies during WW2 was unjust, immoral, and should not have been allowed. It was presented in contrast to the precision bombing used during the First Gulf War (1990-1991). The justness/unjustness was framed not in that any civilians were killed, but whether reasonable precautions were taken to minimize loss of civilian life in the pursuit of military objectives. In short, hitting a power station that provides electricity to air defenses is justified in war. Hitting an entire city to scare the populace into convincing their government to surrender is not. Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 14:39
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Ynglaur posted:In short, hitting a power station that provides electricity to air defenses is justified in war. Hitting an entire city to scare the populace into convincing their government to surrender is not. Geography and time of year should probably be a factor here too. Destroying Ukraine’s power grid in the summer is a very different beast than doing it in the winter. If Russia had succeeded in its aims of destroying Ukraine’s grid and Ukraine hadn’t gotten lucky with weather, we’d be looking at a genocidal catastrophe. the other hand fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 15:41
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The US lawyer trick is saying “I will knock out civilian power in order to do X military op” and that can make it legal. Saying “I will knock out civilian power because it’s cold and I want the people to have their will broken through suffering” wouldn’t pass the legal test.
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Jan 16, 2023 15:44
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mlmp08 posted:The US lawyer trick is saying “I will knock out civilian power in order to do X military op” Like many war legality things. That's only legal if you win the war. Or at least don't have to perform and unconditional surrender. If Iraq had knocked out neighbour's power stations during the Iraq war. People would absolutely have been convicted for that. Even if the US had done the exact same thing. I would say that a majority of legal and ethical issues during war will come down to who has the power to enforce them.
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Jan 16, 2023 15:50
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Some further detail on tank time. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukraine-canada-tanks-leopards/ quote:Ukraine is planning to ask Canada for some of its Leopard-2 main battle tanks, as soon as Germany drops its opposition to the re-export of the weaponry it manufactured. Germany continues to be a holdup in regards to Leopard 2s.
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Jan 16, 2023 16:08
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People in the Swedish military are joking about how we should jailbreak our Leopard 2's in case we get invaded by Russia and Germany opposes us using them for defence and bricks them in a software update.
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Jan 16, 2023 16:20
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mlmp08 posted:The US lawyer trick is saying “I will knock out civilian power in order to do X military op” and that can make it legal. Saying “I will knock out civilian power because it’s cold and I want the people to have their will broken through suffering” wouldn’t pass the legal test. Your point is absolutely valid. I actually don't know if hitting Iraqi power systems in that war was necessary or even helpful to knocking out air defense radars. I hope it was.
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Jan 16, 2023 16:36
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Feliday Melody posted:Like many war legality things. That's only legal if you win the war. Or at least don't have to perform and unconditional surrender. If Iraq had knocked out neighbour's power stations during the Iraq war. People would absolutely have been convicted for that. Even if the US had done the exact same thing. I mean he's right insofar as it's much less likely to be argued that dual purpose sites like power infrastructure are illegal targets, even if the people blowing them up lose the war. There are reasonable war-related arguments to destroy power infrastruture - to hamper troop movements, communications, or military related industry as examples. The intentions and circumstances do matter. However, once your officials and talking heads start gloating about freezing civilians by cutting their power with nary a word about disrupting the enemy war effort that makes it a lot more likely to be considered illegal. But you're still right in that it won't really matter unless Russia loses in such a way that people can actually be held responsible for it. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 16:38
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Ynglaur posted:Your point is absolutely valid. I actually don't know if hitting Iraqi power systems in that war was necessary or even helpful to knocking out air defense radars. I hope it was. This might be a silly question, but wouldn't critical defence infrastructure like that have backup generators on standby?
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Jan 16, 2023 17:14
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Im not sure how many tanks the CF will be will to part with. We have 82 of which 53 are operational.
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Jan 16, 2023 17:46
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TheRat posted:This might be a silly question, but wouldn't critical defence infrastructure like that have backup generators on standby? Yes, but forcing reliance on secondary systems is part of attriting capability.
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Jan 16, 2023 18:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Bret Devereaux article I linked goes into this at depth. With all due respect to Devereaux, he's mostly arguing against the idea of strategic bombing as a war-winning weapon by itself. It isn't, and it shouldn't be treated as such, but I think there's a strong case to be made that strategic bombing can have value in and of itself when directed at the right targets. In WW2, for instance, Adam Tooze makes the point that strategic bombing when directed against the Ruhr industrial area was EXTREMELY effective - not only did it possess multiple steel mills, it was also the location of a large part of Germany's coal mines, which is to say that it was very much the lynchpin of the entire Nazi war economy. This led to an immediate plateauing of Germany's at that point expanding industrial producing, and caused Speer amongst other people to start screaming that if this continued for much longer the Nazi war economy would become untenable. Unfortunately Allied planners were unaware how much of an effect they were having and tried switching targets to terror bombing Berlin instead, which proved pretty much pointless. Later strategic bombing transferred its aim to supporting Allied landings in Europe and only late in the war did they get back to trying to bomb out the Ruhr, which had an immediate effect once it began (though at that point the writing was on the wall for Germany anyhow). Regarding discussions on strategic bombing today, though, it must be said that technology HAS changed and some of the old equations aren't quite as relevant anymore. For instance, with precision-guided cruise missiles, it's no longer necessary to bomb half a city to rubble just to be sure you knocked out a single factory, and it isn't quite necessary to have total air superiority to be able to effectively bomb strategic targets. On one hand, this means that well-targeted strategic bombing may have great value if the targets are sufficiently worthwhile - on the other hand, it also means that if you're hitting a lot of civilian targets, you're either deeply incompetent or you're doing it on purpose. This is actually directly relevant to Ukraine because while discussions of strategic bombing have mostly centered around Russia's (largely futile, I'd agree) use of terror bombing, they actually did use strategic bombing for a much more directly relevant role early in the war by flattening Ukraine's rather extensive defense industry. Now, did this cripple Ukraine entirely? No, it didn't - many of the personnel survived and were able to set up shop in smaller, more distributed and defensive factories, to say nothing of the effects of Western supply and aid. But it's hard to argue that Ukraine's defense industry didn't suffer badly for it - earlier reports I brought up in the thread noted that instead of being able to produce new war material and tanks (as they could have done pre-war), Ukraine's defense industry is mostly restricted to repairing damaged equipment and more limited resupply of ammo. And it would be hard to argue, I think, that Ukraine's military situation wouldn't have been better off if those factories had been left unmolested. Yes, Western aid is good and helpful and would be critical to Ukraine in any event, but being able to produce domestic equipment would have been very useful on top of that. Fair play to Russia so far as that goes - they were legitimate targets, Russia had the equipment necessary to strike them, and successfully did so, worsening Ukraine's military situation. I'd say that is a decent example of strategic bombing having value and a direct impact on the war. The issue is that the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked. The odds of Ukraine rebuilding their defense factories mid-war are pretty low and is likely to just get them bombed out again, and their smaller workshops are both harder to hit and disable, and worth less even if they were hit. Given Ukraine's reliance on Western support there's a limit to how much impact strategic bombing can have on war production anyways unless they're capable of crippling Ukrainian logistics hubs, which so far the Russians don't seem capable of doing. From a military perspective there doesn't seem to be much left worth bombing except maybe, with a question mark, government buildings and infrastructure to try and reduce the Ukrainian government's ability to act and react. So at this point Russia's actions seem a lot more focused on terror-bombing rather than anything else, and as Devereaux notes, that doesn't really seem like it works or is even worth the effort, except maybe to appease a few egos or out of a simple sense of "We have them, so might as well use them." Edit: TheRat posted:This might be a silly question, but wouldn't critical defence infrastructure like that have backup generators on standby? To put it another way, "Why should we try to kill the enemy general? He has subordinates who can step into his role, can't they?" Yes, but the transfer would cause chaos and disruption by itself. It's not going to cause the entire enemy army to shatter or anything, but it will mean that they're steadily less effective at what they do, and doubly more so for a brief time. Same deal with knocking out things that have backup capability - yeah, they might be able to switch to backups, but it'll still cause chaos for a time and now you've got fewer options available if the backup fails too. Tomn fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 18:31
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Burns posted:Im not sure how many tanks the CF will be will to part with. We have 82 of which 53 are operational. I would guess single digits if any. A tank is a tank but I imagine Canada's contribution will be more useful to encourage others to step up rather than actual battlefield results. If we want to give out more we'll have to make a deal to buy a bunch of new tanks, which is possible but complicates things further.
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Jan 16, 2023 18:49
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Feliday Melody posted:People in the Swedish military are joking about how we should jailbreak our Leopard 2's in case we get invaded by Russia and Germany opposes us using them for defence and bricks them in a software update. 21st century warfare continues to be very, very silly at times.
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Jan 16, 2023 19:01
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Feliday Melody posted:People in the Swedish military are joking about how we should jailbreak our Leopard 2's in case we get invaded by Russia and Germany opposes us using them for defence and bricks them in a software update. Do they use the Tesla like internet updates or floppies?
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Jan 16, 2023 19:12
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Fidelitious posted:Some further detail on tank time. The Germans say nobody's actually asked them about re-exporting Leopards but they wouldn't object if they did.
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Jan 16, 2023 19:20
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Feliday Melody posted:Like many war legality things. That's only legal if you win the war. Or at least don't have to perform and unconditional surrender. If Iraq had knocked out neighbour's power stations during the Iraq war. People would absolutely have been convicted for that. Even if the US had done the exact same thing. Except in this war we are literally seeing Russia being punished by performing war crimes by the international community in a variety of ways
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Jan 16, 2023 19:32
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If anyone actually requested an export license we'd know within a very short amount of time. People seem to be talking mad poo poo but not actually acting. I'd guess that there will be a coordinated effort after the 20th, because anything tank related will have to involve a whole bunch of donor nations pooling together to meet Ukraine's requirements. So like the IFVs recently.
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Jan 16, 2023 19:38
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I am seeng. Forces that can help but too cowardly to help
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