Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Between 2011 and today, I'm fairly convinced at this point that "the full might of western air forces" is about one sortie each from the entire EU, then western air forces are the US air force, occasionally giving munitions to its little buddies so they can say they helped.

mlmp08 posted:

Ukraine isn’t an ally of any Leo operators.

But more that Germany is considered a reliable supplier, but a supplier who requires permission before you proliferate their weapons to countries or organizations they never agreed to arm. So if you are buying for your defense, fine. If you are buying and want to sell or transfer the weapons later, there are easier suppliers than buying from Germany.

quote:

Mission accomplished, Putin can go

Russia's Vladimir Putin probably believes himself that his mission is to defeat America, to create a new world order in which Russia will be in charge, and so on and so forth. But he is wrong. His mission was to destroy Russia. And he has achieved that. He can now go in peace.

In fact, this is the only thing he has achieved, nothing else. The economy is shrinking, the demographic situation is worsening, technological backwardness is deepening, there is overwhelming hypocrisy everywhere - all these are achievements of his reign. The list could be continued for a long time. War and massacres are the climax.

For the world, a country has disappeared with which to cooperate and interact. Now only a territory remains from which a threat emanates. To ward it off, you have to join forces.

A country is more than a place. The territory is not going anywhere, and the people will mostly stay: even today, it is not a majority that is leaving Russia. A country is a culture, a way of life, an identity, a way of being seen in the world. The country is a link between the present and the past - continuity - and the future concerns both what is today and what was before.

The Land after the October Putsch 1917

Our country has already disappeared once - it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. After the October coup, there was a territory where a certain madness took place, but it no longer had any relation to Russia, to its culture, to its history, except for the most pathological moments - like the time of Ivan the Terrible's reign.

The country became a negation of Russian history and culture, it killed or exiled those who symbolised the old country, and allowed the memory of those who had died before 1917 to be forgotten or distorted. For decades afterwards, the country underwent a long and painful revival - but it never quite managed to come back to itself.

Now something very similar has happened. Until recently, the word "Russia" was associated with both bad and good things - dictatorship, Stalin, camps, but also Russian culture, departure into space, victory. But that is all in the past. Just as once the words "Germany" or "German" were associated not with Goethe or the great German scientists, but with the SS, the mad Führer and the ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka, today everything to which the adjective "Russian" is applied is perceived only as death, destruction, aggression and lies. And it will stay that way for a long time!

The country has disappeared. And not only that: everything we have built since the end of the eighties has been destroyed. There is no Russian culture. Yes, the opera season at La Scala in Milan opened with Modest Mussorgsky and Anton Chekhov is staged in all the theatres of the world. But if there used to be something behind these names that was called great Russian culture, today Alexander Pushkin or Pyotr Tchaikovsky stand alone, without reference to a cultural context. They are there, but nothing but emptiness yawns behind them.

There is no Russian army either

There is no longer a Russian army, there is only a dangerous armed group sowing death in Ukraine. For an army defends its country and does not act like bandits in a neighbouring country, without any goal other than the realisation of vague fantasies in the first person. A modern army is a unit and does not consist of warring private armies. A modern army has discipline. There are excesses there too, but it punishes rapists and looters instead of encouraging them to sack a city or giving units of criminals the title of guards. There is no longer an army.

Since Peter the Great, the word Russia has been associated with the idea of military power. Now Putin has shown the world that there is no power at all. This is already dangerous for the security of the territory that Russia was until recently. Stalin's unsuccessful winter war against Finland (it lasted from November 1939 to March 1940 and revealed weaknesses in the Soviet army; ed.) prompted Hitler to invade the USSR - why not attack when the Red Army was weak?

The threat posed by NATO was, of course, invented by our authorities, whereas the threat posed by China or some Taliban is very real. Their decisive action against neighbouring territories has become more likely. There used to be (in the eyes of the world) a militarily strong country and now, no matter how many cartoons are shown about wonder weapons, no matter how many parades are held, all that is left is an area accessible to any aggressor.

Russia no longer has a president

Russia doesn't actually have a president either. It's not that he doesn't have legitimacy through elections. A president, king or sultan is someone who maintains order (not necessarily constitutional order, but some order) and communicates with the outside world and his own country.

Order, like the constitution, has long since ceased to exist - fires, dirty sewage, failure to honour commitments made (soon you will end up in prison if you publish official promises made in recent years, because the state is being discredited).

But Putin refuses to communicate. He did not appear, for example, at the last G20 summit, which would have been a great opportunity to explain to the world that it was wrong, while Putin, on the contrary, was right about everything.

He also does not want to communicate with his own people - he cancelled the press conference and the constitutionally required speech to the Federation Assembly (it consists of both chambers of parliament; ed.), as well as the New Year's reception - he does not even want to speak to "his faithful".

Not long ago, Putin appeared at the Valdai Forum (a meeting of journalists, politicians, experts/scientists and public figures from Russia and other countries held annually in Russia in autumn since 2004; ed.). There he said, "Why do we need a world without Russia?" Exactly this kind of world - without Russia - has come into being thanks to Vladimir Putin's efforts in 2022.

mlmp08 posted:

Ukraine isn’t an ally of any Leo operators.

But more that Germany is considered a reliable supplier, but a supplier who requires permission before you proliferate their weapons to countries or organizations they never agreed to arm. So if you are buying for your defense, fine. If you are buying and want to sell or transfer the weapons later, there are easier suppliers than buying from Germany.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Between 2011 and today, I'm fairly convinced at this point that "the full might of western air forces" is about one sortie each from the entire EU, then western air forces are the US air force, occasionally giving munitions to its little buddies so they can say they helped.

I can think of a lot of people in Africa very interested in how german weapons can't be proliferated.

Ynglaur posted:

In general, European countries need to look to their own defense far more than they have.

mlmp08 posted:

mlmp08 posted:

1: Ukraine says they need armor, and the US agrees (but the US doesn't want to provide Abrams).

quote:

Following the first delivery of S-400 components, the White House announced that Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 ‘render[ed] its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible’ and that sales of the aircraft to Turkey had been suspended. Four F-35As formally owned by Turkey will be prevented from leaving the US, and all Turkish personnel involved with the F-35 were required to leave the US by 31 July. The US will also end Turkish involvement in the production of 900 of the F-35’s parts by March 2020. This adjustment will cost Washington US$500 million to US$600m in the near term, but ultimately will cost Turkish firms many billions of dollars in lost revenues.

mlmp08 posted:

I don't think that makes Germany unreliable.

Mr. Smile Face Hat posted:

I wonder if the countries that were being helped/liberated by the allies in WWII all had formal contracts with them.

quote:

The Soviet aviation minister Mikhail Khrunichev and aircraft designer A. S. Yakovlev suggested to Premier Joseph Stalin that the USSR buy the conservative but fully developed Nene engines from Rolls-Royce (having been alerted to the fact that the U.K. Labour government wanted to improve post-war UK-Russia foreign relations) for the purpose of copying them in a minimum of time. Stalin is said to have replied, "What fool will sell us his secrets?"[4]

However, he gave his consent to the proposal and Mikoyan, engine designer Vladimir Yakovlevich Klimov [ru], and others travelled to the United Kingdom to request the engines. To Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its Minister of Trade, Sir Stafford Cripps, were perfectly willing to provide technical information and a license to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene. Sample engines were purchased and delivered with blueprints. Following evaluation and adaptation to Russian conditions, the windfall technology was tooled for mass-production as the Klimov RD-45 to be incorporated into the MiG-15.[4]

Mr. Smile Face Hat posted:

I wonder if the countries that were being helped/liberated by the allies in WWII all had formal contracts with them.

TheRat posted:

Were they all being liberated for the noble cause of liberation, or were some of them being liberated as part of a sustained effort to beat the enemy into total submission?

Nenonen posted:

At the time people were still quite... naive, as exemplified by how Britain helped Stalin make modern jet fighters for the Korean war.

Knightsoul posted:

The 14 Challenger tanks the british wants to send in ukraine not enough?!?
14 tanks are a full tank company, I bet they will reconquer the whole Crimea with those tanks.

notaspy posted:

Sorry if this is Clancy chat, but all the weapons systems that the Ukrainians are getting are ones that are available on the open market, right?

So isn't all this aid more a once in a lifetime opportunity for arms manufacturers to make a loving fortune?

Antigravitas posted:

I'm not sure if you can call it an open market, really. There's some pretty high end gear in Ukraine now that is very much not available to most countries on the planet regardless of how much money they could offer.

I'd question the business acumen of any arms manufacturer who isn't making tons of money during a time when an entire continent is taking a good hard look at their defence posture. (At least until some countries decide to switch to a war economy. But then profit motive ceases to be a concern anyway)

Mr. Smile Face Hat posted:

I wonder if the countries that were being helped/liberated by the allies in WWII all had formal contracts with them.

notaspy posted:

Sorry if this is Clancy chat, but all the weapons systems that the Ukrainians are getting are ones that are available on the open market, right?

So isn't all this aid more a once in a lifetime opportunity for arms manufacturers to make a loving fortune?

cinci zoo sniper posted:

I think it’s fair to interpret “open market” as “public domain”, even if it is sold to a specific subset of countries. That said, there have been some truly bespoke thing sent to Ukraine, e.g., the boat drones or the whatever was the custom USAF drone thing built for Ukraine, Phoenix or something. And that’s just going by the things featured prominently in the public conversation.

TheDeadlyShoe posted:

Though the biggest Arms Profits of the war thus far seem to be in South Korea, which ???

cinci zoo sniper posted:

As a side note, apparently those Korean tanks are like the most or the second most expensive contemporary MBT per unit price.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Most of it and yes, not sure what’s the worry about Clancychat for here even. Unless you’re meaning to say that the NATO MIC forced Russia to invade Ukraine so that it could make money, which is crazy orientalist nonsense.

Shogeton posted:

Perun actually had a video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbaAKZfjwg

The basic gist is that Poland isn't just getting tanks, but also the know how how to make it, and a partnership. And Poland does have some tank building facilities that are kind of aging out as it is. And for South Korea it's a really nice way of getting a foothold in the European Market.

ZombieLenin posted:

Wouldn't that be Occidentalist, since it readies the West as any entity beholden to exploitation demanded by arms manufacturers?

Also neither Russia or the Ukraine, to my knowledge, has ever been codified as part of the Other in the same sense that the colonized "Orient" has been.

Kraftwerk posted:

Is that related to labor costs in Korea and the relatively lower volume of tanks produced so far to spread out development costs and deliver economies of scale on the production facilities?

I imagine as Polish K2 variants start rolling off the lines in Europe that cost will decrease once industrialization is completed.

Kraftwerk posted:

So the part I didn't really understand was how Korea gets paid once Poland gains manufacturing capability? Is it something like a service/expertise contract? Or do they pay a commission for each tank they produce? Like how does Korea profit? Is there a point in time where Poland makes enough of these tanks that they can just keep making them without having to pay Korea?

Kraftwerk posted:

So the part I didn't really understand was how Korea gets paid once Poland gains manufacturing capability? Is it something like a service/expertise contract? Or do they pay a commission for each tank they produce? Like how does Korea profit? Is there a point in time where Poland makes enough of these tanks that they can just keep making them without having to pay Korea?

Kraftwerk posted:

So the part I didn't really understand was how Korea gets paid once Poland gains manufacturing capability? Is it something like a service/expertise contract? Or do they pay a commission for each tank they produce? Like how does Korea profit? Is there a point in time where Poland makes enough of these tanks that they can just keep making them without having to pay Korea?

Der Kyhe posted:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-should-not-expect-turkeys-support-nato-membership-after-stockholm-protest-2023-01-23/

In other war-related news; Erdogan is again milking for domestic political points for his upcoming election, playing the old classics like "Sweden (and by proxy Finland) is no longer welcome to NATO".