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Tomn posted:Eh, that might be a factor in decision-making but I feel like it'd be a relatively minor factor - issues of national defense, internal politics over sending aid to Ukraine, diplomatic relationships with the players involved, procurement issues on the home front etc. are likely to factor in a lot more. Besides, this assumes that the government (who's the one actually making the decision to send tanks or not, not the manufacturers) is actively nervous that their tanks will come off badly in practice compared to Russian tanks, and if they're worried about THAT it's probably not optics they're primarily concerned with, but whether or not their national defense is sufficient. If, as is entirely possible, they feel confident about their tanks then optics aren't going to stop them - in fact, it'll encourage them to send them in to showcase what they can do and act as a living advertisement. There must be another angle to this. I think the real advantage behind western tanks is the doctrine and tactics that best maximize their capability. I think Ukraine likes hit and run tactics based on attrition so they want to quickly scoot in shoot up a position and then drive away before artillery and ATGMs get them. Additionally these western tanks have amazing thermals and optics which let them find concealed positions where someone might be waiting with RPGs. The whole thing is probably about seeing the enemy before they see you and driving away before artillery gets you. If you don’t do that then western tanks are probably as useful as the Russian ones.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 04:50 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 10:53 |
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New Geleotti piece on Russia after Putin: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/is-there-hope-for-russia-after-putin/quote:It is perhaps a mark of Vladimir Putin’s apparent endurance — after 22 years directly and indirectly ruling Russia — that there is such an appetite for claims of his imminent departure. He has blood cancer or pancreatic cancer, and will be dead within six months (we’ve been hearing such tales for years now). He will shortly be toppled by a palace coup. He is about to anoint a successor. And yet he remains stubbornly in place.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 11:02 |
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Kraftwerk posted:I think Ukraine likes hit and run tactics based on attrition so they want to quickly scoot in shoot up a position and then drive away before artillery and ATGMs get them. Additionally these western tanks have amazing thermals and optics which let them find concealed positions where someone might be waiting with RPGs. The whole thing is probably about seeing the enemy before they see you and driving away before artillery gets you. People often seem to froget the issue of crew ergonomics, and that's really an arena where Western vehicles blow Soviet/Russian ones out of the water. Sure, they're somewhat smaller, but with better ergonomics you will have a crew that doesn't get tired as quickly, will be able to operate in and out of combat more quickly and efficiently, can more easily change positions within the vehicle if that's required, and if the vehicle is knocked out there's a much better chance that the crew walks away from it alive. It really cannot be overstated IMO, it's one of those soft factors that it seems is often missed. Soviet vehicles often seem to display a conscious disregard for soft factors in their design, and I don't really think it's a valuable tradeoff to have more and somewhat smaller vehicles when you still seem to be losing them at a higher rate, and losing those vehicles also often ends up with the crew trapped and dead.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 11:52 |
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Randarkman posted:Soviet vehicles often seem to display a conscious disregard for soft factors in their design, and I don't really think it's a valuable tradeoff to have more and somewhat smaller vehicles when you still seem to be losing them at a higher rate, and losing those vehicles also often ends up with the crew trapped and dead. A lot of this is because the Russian or Soviet stuff was designed and built within various harsh limitations. Their tanks for instance tend to be on the small side and less armored than western tanks because they're required to fit within a ~40 ton weight limit. Abrams weight around 70 tons for comparison. The BMP's infamous fuel tank doors and poor armor are due to severe weight and space limitations, etc as well as a requirement to be amphibious for fording rivers and lakes. Their designers are anything but stupid. They are however constantly forced to make difficult trade offs and its the crews that pay for it.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 12:42 |
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One thing that I find odd about the current 'Russian mobilization scare' is that it really doesn't take into account the actual proportions between the populations of Ukraine and Russia. That's not to say mobilization waves are worthless or do not pose a serious challenge for Ukraine. Of course they do - the manpower-anemic Russian army which invaded was much more vulnerable, inflexible and thinly spread. But Russia has a population of fighting-age individuals approximately three times that of Ukraine. That's not the horde-like numerical advantage some make it out to be. Especially not given the massive size of Ukraine and the challenges of outfitting/training hundreds of thousands of soldiers. I find the increased war footing of the Russian economy a much greater threat to Ukraine than mobilization waves. Which is also why Ukraine really needs Western materiel to keep up. Even if Russia turned out not to have the expected massive materiel stockpiles - they do have heavy industry to produce / refit / adapt. Ukraine's rather impressive heavy industry was wrecked very early in the war - and if logistics is the king, production is the queen. If Ukraine does not win the war in 2023, and the Russian economy does not collapse by then to an extent that their heavy industry suffers greatly - then the supporters of Ukraine could find itself in a position where they can't simply divert production and current stockpiles to Ukraine, but have to actually dedicating a greater portion of their economy to military production. Now that's probably a good idea anyway, given that the current shortfall of equipment and munitions in Europe will take decades to replenish given current military production capacities. It might also be a welcome way to fight unemployment when the inevitable economic recession hits. But while we're caught in a weird limbo of high inflation, labor shortages and low growth, that's much harder to do. I see the rush to provide Ukraine with any possible edge as much more of a way to avoid the war dragging out long enough to become one of industrial attrition - rather than a way to address manpower asymmetries. Russia will, even with one or more waves of mobilization, still struggle to field enough personnel for the kind of war they're fighting and the opponent they're facing. The Ukrainian army is large. Russian mobilization is something they have to do, to even stay in the fight. But the scales will be tipped by material and munitions, in my opinion, rather than manpower. Both sides are low on materiel to properly outfit mobile formations with strong fire capabilities. They're low on munitions and replacement/repair capacity to take full advantage of what they do have. Russia has an industrial base - Ukraine has the scattered remnants of one. The US MIC and massive stores of equipment can do a lot to make up for this - but without Ukrainian victory in 2023 I think Europe will have no choice but to also step up and to some degree, gear their economies toward military production.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 14:31 |
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Antigravitas posted:
And now: VOA posted:"Countries that already have Leopard tanks can begin training missions for our tank crews. We will start with that, and we will go from there. I hope, Germany will follow their process, conduct their internal consultations, and will arrive at the decision to transfer tanks. I am optimistic regarding this because the first step has been made. We will start training programs for our tank crews on Leopards 2,” Reznikov said. edit: https://www.businessinsider.de/politik/deutschland/lambrecht-verbot-bestandsaufnahme-von-leopard-1-und-2/ Business Insider posted:Only now, almost a year after Ukraine first asked for battle tanks, are the stocks of Leopard tanks in Germany to be reviewed. Pistorius said on the fringes of the summit that a corresponding order had been issued. The Business Insider speculates that this was done to not pressure Scholz, but I find that a bridge too far in an article that is already reporting on rumours. There's already a factual error in the article – what's taken stock of is materiel in industry stockpiles, not within the army. The army knows its inventory. Anyway, what's the normal expression to use here? lol, lmao? Antigravitas fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jan 21, 2023 |
# ? Jan 21, 2023 14:50 |
Antigravitas posted:And now: Link?
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 14:53 |
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Link? https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-defense-minister-troops-will-train-on-german-tanks-in-poland/6927976.html
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:01 |
Antigravitas posted:https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-defense-minister-troops-will-train-on-german-tanks-in-poland/6927976.html Cheers. Another interesting tidbit from Reznikov there: quote:All the previously announced [military aid] packages have been confirmed. In addition, some new packages were discussed behind closed doors, but I am not at liberty to announce them just yet.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:05 |
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Sometimes I'm baffled how issues that seem pretty clear in German media get so muddled when translated into English. Is it because both languages are so close, it's easy to get confused? Or are journalists in English-speaking countries just really this bad
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:08 |
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I used the German Business Insider, which the Focus was reporting on, because Focus is absolutely beneath me. But generally, yes, Anglo journos are impossibly bad. There's a heavy reliance on machine translation, and few publications still have proper, well-connected and educated correspondents. It's also the Twitter-isation of journalism that just tanked reliability. Antigravitas fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jan 21, 2023 |
# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:12 |
Antigravitas posted:The Business Insider speculates that this was done to not pressure Scholz, but I find that a bridge too far in an article that is already reporting on rumours. There's already a factual error in the article – what's taken stock of is materiel in industry stockpiles, not within the army. The army knows its inventory. Is it now? Basically everyone is reporting that army stocks are going through this review as well. Here’s FT, for instance, even with reaction quotes from other German politicians: https://www.ft.com/content/e17e1724-3847-4093-bf2a-ac471ed209e7
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:15 |
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I'm sure Pistorius also asked his ministry to hand him a report on what the Bundeswehr can spare, but the big item here is to get an inventory of what industry has and when it can be made ready. That would include getting some real answers from industry outside of press statements from various manufacturers that they totally have N tanks ready to go if only someone forked over a few hundred million Euros. The real question for me why the gently caress this wasn't done months ago.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:24 |
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Is it now? Basically everyone is reporting that army stocks are going through this review as well. Here’s FT, for instance, even with reaction quotes from other German politicians: https://www.ft.com/content/e17e1724-3847-4093-bf2a-ac471ed209e7 Here's a non-paywalled link about this: It's again a misunderstanding. To summarize, Pistorius has ordered to check our Leopard-1 and Leopard-2 stocks (both industry and Bundeswehr) to see how compatible they even are to our allies' versions, to make sure there are no problems when in the future, 10 countries all decide to send small amounts of their Leos all at once into Ukraine. The stocks are well-known, but other issues (how well maintained, compatibility etc.) are huge unknowns, since generally if you put hundreds of Leo-2s into a big hall and have like one guy go look at them once a month, you have a very low ability to know how well they would work when pulled out of storage.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 15:25 |
Very well, I’ll concede that figuring out the number of existing Leopards and the number of working Leopards are different tasks.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 16:18 |
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Very well, I’ll concede that figuring out the number of existing Leopards and the number of working Leopards are different tasks. Being a person who works in civil service I consider it to be incredibly dubious that any Western government does not already know exactly both how many MBTs are in the national inventory and exactly how many of those are in an operable state. My IT department knows exactly how many microfiche machines the state government has, how many still worked at the time they were put into storage, and how many spare parts it has in its inventory for those machines even though we do not even use microfiche anymore. It's just staggeringly difficult for me to believe that any Western government does not have a pretty gods' damned solid and accurate accounting of how many MBTs it has in active service, how many it has in reserve, and how many of each are in current working condition.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 16:25 |
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A lot of the materiel Ukraine has received from Germany comes from industry stocks, like the Gepards. The army does not keep inventory, because it was made into a ~~lean army~~ that does everything Just In Time.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 16:37 |
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ZombieLenin posted:Being a person who works in civil service I consider it to be incredibly dubious that any Western government does not already know exactly both how many MBTs are in the national inventory and exactly how many of those are in an operable state. Anecdotes vs. anecdote, but I have been contracted to patch blank spots in the registers of the railway infrastructure manager because they want to know e.g. when the rails were last changed and the registry just says NULL. Similarly a friend of mine had a job that essentially amounted to rummaging through storage rooms to track down tens of thousands worth AV equipment that the public broadcasting company lost track of when the government replaced the management. I don't find it at all hard to believe that they have no idea how many of the tanks work. Many government agencies suck at asset management.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 16:41 |
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ZombieLenin posted:Being a person who works in civil service I consider it to be incredibly dubious that any Western government does not already know exactly both how many MBTs are in the national inventory and exactly how many of those are in an operable state. I'm a historian who works with government archives and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have piss poor records. I know at least one major military branch that doesn't have a complete catalog of their own archival material.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:10 |
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Antigravitas posted:A lot of the materiel Ukraine has received from Germany comes from industry stocks, like the Gepards. The army does not keep inventory, because it was made into a ~~lean army~~ that does everything Just In Time. I don't know if the German military has the same problem as the Danish - but inventory and budget management has been completely annihilated by failed attempts at transitioning to new IT systems. Many of which turned out too expensive or poorly scoped - and thus the result was wasted expenses and a dysfunctional management system that has never been brought back to working order. So while each individual unit likely knows exactly what they have at their immediate disposal and what the, probably strict, usage limits are - this doesn't translate into a top-down inventory that is functional. The Danish military doesn't even have the ability to determine the expense level of international deployments - the various types of expenditure are so interwoven, that they've lost the ability to properly budget. And as you say it is all just-in-time, so the maintenance staff are not allowed to develop proper routines and an in-depth knowledge of logistics. They're really good at slotting into multi-national forces, but they don't work properly on their own. They don't have the budget, the leadership or the culture. European militaries are a sham - everything is allocated to making sure international commitments can be honored - there is no flexibility and no real backbone. Many countries have de facto evolved into contributors of auxiliaries for the US, NATO and the UN. There is no real military to keep track of inventories. It's just a shell for using the military as a foreign policy tool.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:16 |
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It could very well mean then that there is a serious scandal brewing in European governments that could have major fallout if it came out to the public so they’re trying to stall for time until they can figure out how to allocate tanks that may or may not exist.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:38 |
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PederP posted:They're really good at slotting into multi-national forces, but they don't work properly on their own. They don't have the budget, the leadership or the culture. I know you meant this as a critique but I must say that from a shared defense perspective, it does not sound terrible. Having a bunch of countries all with independently operating forces, set up to work alone and not co-operating with other neighbors would probably be worse for common defense. Military IS just a foreign policy tool. If you are most effective executing foreign policy in cooperation with like minded allies, it makes sense to organize the military side of that foreign policy the same way SirTagz fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 21, 2023 |
# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:39 |
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PederP posted:I don't know if the German military has the same problem as the Danish - but inventory and budget management has been completely annihilated by failed attempts at transitioning to new IT systems. Many of which turned out too expensive or poorly scoped - and thus the result was wasted expenses and a dysfunctional management system that has never been brought back to working order. Man, this gives me bad flashbacks to my time in the Bundeswehr. During my time, a lot of old IT was getting thrown out for a general upgrade throughout the battalion. One day, all our computers stopped working and we milled around in confusion and panic for nearly 15 minutes, before we suddenly got a call from our IT that the network will be down for a while. Company command was really miffed about that little kerfluffle.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:44 |
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Huh. This whole thing is really messing with my stereotype of Germans. I probably deserve it for having one in the first place. The thing is, like it or not, the existing stereotype that Germans are always fastidious in nature and precise in communication, means that statements from German leadership that contradict that are going to come off as false to media that buys into the stereotype. Even when it's not accurate. Basically every Anglo news source I'm subscribed to is now sensationally proclaiming that "Germany blocked the tanks!" in the headline, then takes a more nuanced approach in the body of the article about the new defence minster being more enthusiastic to support Ukraine, (beyond the large amount of support provided already,) and some sort of minor bureaucratic process that has to happen before other countries can send leopards. On top of this, we have a well documented history of German leadership foot-dragging on this issue, a series of weirdly evasive statements on the same, and a theory that they keep poor records of their stocks of battle tanks (?!?) Yeah. No idea what to think about this. One thing I can say for certain, is that this mixed messaging is going to be a problem for Germany going forward. Svaha fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Jan 21, 2023 |
# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:44 |
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All of this just drives home how convinced Western European governments were that they would basically never need to fight any kind of military conflict (outside peacekeeping missions and token support for US/UK/French neocolonialist adventures) ever again.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 17:46 |
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:I don't find it at all hard to believe that they have no idea how many of the tanks work. Many government agencies suck at asset management. Wouldn't they know which vehicles work, because those are the ones that are in active use and get serviced periodically? I find it more likely that they have a very clear picture of which tanks are ready for service and which are not, but of the latter there is uncertainty of how much overhaul they need to be serviceable, and how long it will take for the maintenance crews to get all of them back to condition. It's troubling that this need has been on the wall for at least six months, yet it feels like no one has used the time to start at least preparations for getting mothballed inventory to running condition.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:05 |
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The Germans don't even keep track of their own rifles, at one point they resorted to using broomsticks instead for training. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if they find their tank storage curiously roomy.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:10 |
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Moon Slayer posted:All of this just drives home how convinced Western European governments were that they would basically never need to fight any kind of military conflict (outside peacekeeping missions and token support for US/UK/French neocolonialist adventures) ever again. That's a wrong take of the situation. They weren't prepared for a scenario where they would be requested to provide hundreds of main battle tanks to an outsider in the middle of a war in which they are not directly involved. If Russia attacked actual NATO members then they would be facing the full might of western air forces.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:10 |
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PederP posted:One thing that I find odd about the current 'Russian mobilization scare' is that it really doesn't take into account the actual proportions between the populations of Ukraine and Russia. That's not to say mobilization waves are worthless or do not pose a serious challenge for Ukraine. Of course they do - the manpower-anemic Russian army which invaded was much more vulnerable, inflexible and thinly spread. I broadly agree with the rest of your statements in this post, but I do want to note that as far as I can tell, most sources talking about the dangers of Russian mobilization are less talking about Russia's ability to crush Ukraine with new overwhelming might, and more "Now Russia can actually afford to man their defensive positions properly, closing off easy opportunities for Ukraine to exploit weaknesses." I'd agree with Russia probably can't generate much new offensive power just by mobilization alone, but it takes less in both equipment and training to become a headache on the defense and I get the impression that Russia can at least do that.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:17 |
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Moon Slayer posted:All of this just drives home how convinced Western European governments were that they would basically never need to fight any kind of military conflict (outside peacekeeping missions and token support for US/UK/French neocolonialist adventures) ever again. Everyone seems to have been overly optimistic about the prospect of peace and trade with Russia until fairly recently, yes. Even after the invasion Georgia and Crimea, which should have been huge flashing warning signs that history was not, in fact, over. Looking at you, Francis Fukuyama, you moron. You absolute imbecile. I can't really blame people for being optimistic after the cold war, but ignoring obvious signs that the Russian federation was going badly sideways for the last 15 years is pretty unforgivable. Nenonen posted:That's a wrong take of the situation. They weren't prepared for a scenario where they would be requested to provide hundreds of main battle tanks to an outsider in the middle of a war in which they are not directly involved. If Russia attacked actual NATO members then they would be facing the full might of western air forces. Svaha fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 21, 2023 |
# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:18 |
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I hope we can agree that "just-in-time" military procurement and logistics are pants-on-head regardless of the geopolitical context. I don't think that German defense minister quoted a page or two ago understood the definition of "spare," considering he was a proponent of JIT spare parts.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:38 |
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Quixzlizx posted:I hope we can agree that "just-in-time" military procurement and logistics are pants-on-head regardless of the geopolitical context.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:40 |
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Svaha posted:Huh. This whole thing is really messing with my stereotype of Germans. I probably deserve it for having one in the first place. Germany is primarily extremely old and run by boomers. This legislature is the first in almost two decades that a significant number of younger people entered parliament, and you can see that effect in the foreign ministry. The boomer got the chancellery. Anglo media cannot at all conceive of the political culture of a country where public debate is as extensive as in Germany. Political culture is all about talking things to death until a consensus is reached and executed upon. That's great if you are a foreign news service, because you can write an endless stream of headlines about every single public statement of every single official or not-official in the country opining on things. Also, the "German efficiency" is a myth (though the German public service is one of the most efficient in the world), Germany is Process Nation. It's all about Process. Everything is Process. Zedsdeadbaby posted:The Germans don't even keep track of their own rifles, at one point they resorted to using broomsticks instead for training. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if they find their tank storage curiously roomy. That's not what happened there. The vehicles were not even supposed to be armed.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:41 |
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Nenonen posted:Wouldn't they know which vehicles work, because those are the ones that are in active use and get serviced periodically? On a unit level probably, but if you don't have good indicators for and reporting of readiness, higher ups may very well have no idea. Just as the contractor knows when they replaced rails or sleepers (and with what), but if the paperwork is incomplete or never punched into the database, none of the civil servants responsible for monitoring network condition will know. COVID has probably reduced drills substantially though, so even unit level knowledge might be a bit sketchy.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:57 |
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Tomn posted:I broadly agree with the rest of your statements in this post, but I do want to note that as far as I can tell, most sources talking about the dangers of Russian mobilization are less talking about Russia's ability to crush Ukraine with new overwhelming might, and more "Now Russia can actually afford to man their defensive positions properly, closing off easy opportunities for Ukraine to exploit weaknesses." I'd agree with Russia probably can't generate much new offensive power just by mobilization alone, but it takes less in both equipment and training to become a headache on the defense and I get the impression that Russia can at least do that. From most accounts I've read the Russian lines are far deeper now than they were at the time of the Ukrainian counter offensives over the summer. That means the lightning breakthroughs that enabled the success of those offensives are far less likely now. Unless Ukraine gets more heavy weaponry, the war is going to stall out into a miserable trench and artillery slug-fest for the foreseeable future. Given that situation, Russia has the manpower and industry to overpower Ukraine through sheer attrition eventually. Weirdly enough, this situation is exactly what most military analysts were predicting before Ukraine surprised everyone by wildly defying everyone's expectations again. I think we have to be careful about that. It's great that Ukraine managed to pull it off twice in a row, but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they can do it every time as a matter of course. In many ways, they are worse off now than they were a few month ago. Their infrastructure is being pummelled, their economy is in the toilet, they are still having ammo shortages, they are still losing hundreds of people and weapons a day, and it seems Russia is pushing them back around Bakhmut. Giving them the minimum assistance and hoping for the best is not gonna cut it like it did at the beginning.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:57 |
Svaha posted:Russia has the manpower and industry to overpower Ukraine through sheer attrition eventually. This seems like a possibility sure but hardly a certainty as long as Ukraine keeps getting western support and Russian industry remains hampered by western sanctions.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 18:59 |
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Antigravitas posted:Germany is primarily extremely old and run by boomers. This legislature is the first in almost two decades that a significant number of younger people entered parliament, and you can see that effect in the foreign ministry. The boomer got the chancellery.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 19:09 |
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Svaha posted:Thanks. I appreciate you disabusing me of some of the dumb stereotypes that I've passively absorbed though my dumb Anglo media. I plan to visit a cousin in Berlin someday to perhaps disabuse the rest of them. Coincidentally, Berlin is the perfect place to do so!
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 19:14 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This seems like a possibility sure but hardly a certainty as long as Ukraine keeps getting western support and Russian industry remains hampered by western sanctions. Russia is also getting support from Iran, North Korea, and to some extent, China for what that's worth. I'm sure they can keep banging out artillery systems and shells for a long time, despite no longer having access to high quality microchips and the like. High quality weapons? Probably not, but good enough to keep the meat-grinder whirring along for years to come? Yeah, probably. I think their economy and public support will collapse first, but that is by no means a given, and even that might not stop the war machine, considering the authoritarian nature of the Russian Federation.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 19:25 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 10:53 |
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Svaha posted:I'm not saying it's a certainty, just a very real possibility. Support from North Korea is pretty much limited, they may have some stockpiles they can sell to Russia, but their production capability as a tiny rear end country crippled by even worse isolation than Russia is probably fairly small. And Iran's help is pretty much counter-productive: Sure, it makes Russia shoot longer, but it also enrages US-politicians to see Iran high-fiving Putin this way. Basically any Iranian drone showing up on the wrong side in Ukraine causes more help to flow from the US. China, maybe. But on the other hand, India and China have Russia over an oil barrel and are squeezing so hard, their help also comes with a hefty price. A price that may cause an economical collapse if they force Russia to accept even lower oil prices in the future. With help like these, it's less that Russia has allies, and more that they have slightly less hostile enemies.
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# ? Jan 21, 2023 19:38 |