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BabyFur Denny posted:the USA can do whatever they want, but looking e.g. at Germany ... public health insurance needs more funding, education needs more money, public unemployment support and other social support systems need more money, and the list goes on. I find it hard to justify spending any extra money on more tanks, bombs and guns, especially considering that Russia just took itself out and is no longer a serious threat to any Western / NATO country. Wow, Russia just "took itself out" without any opposition from Ukrainians or support from Western militaries? That's crazy bro
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Feb 15, 2023 12:15
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boofhead posted:Bundeswehr is about 183k active, 29k reserve as of 2022 according to Wikipedia According to German Wikipedia, the reserve is over 900k. I'm guessing English Wiki only counts currently actively serving reservists or something dumb like that Nenonen posted:I got you homie Seeing all this military crap in Bremerhaven is surreal. I've visited the city a couple of times, mostly to see the local Schifffahrtsmuseum.
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Feb 15, 2023 12:17
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Libluini posted:According to German Wikipedia, the reserve is over 900k. I'm guessing English Wiki only counts currently actively serving reservists or something dumb like that Whoops, yes good catch. The Bundeswehr has both figures (but also different numbers), the 35k is for reservists who have been summoned into duty, total pool is 930k https://www.bundeswehr.de/de/ueber-die-bundeswehr/die-reserve-der-bundeswehr/auftrag-der-reserve-der-bundeswehr
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Feb 15, 2023 12:23
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Hannibal Rex posted:One of the reasons for Russia's missile campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure was to run them out of missiles for their S-300s and other air defenses, and RUSI was warning months ago that Ukraine was running low and Russia could resume air attacks unless sufficient Western systems were supplied. I guess we might see about that fairly soon. You can just put the link into archive.is to get around the paywall: https://archive.is/i8KEB
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Feb 15, 2023 12:57
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https://www.ft.com/content/0d3babcf-e047-4b5f-bb0f-1c3011bb96e0 Confirming earlier rumours, VDL says that the next sanctions package will include 11 billion EUR worth of missile, drone, and helicopter parts. That's not all that there will be to it – it looks like EC wants to significantly shore up sanctions enforcement and monitoring capabilities it has.
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Feb 15, 2023 12:59
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Regarding use of frozen assets to pay Ukraine: I would be cautious about this. There are people who are loudly calling for it, but the EU is a Law Golem, and Rule of Law is utterly fundamental to its operation. If assets are to be diverted from Russia, it will have to happen within the set of laws and I am very confident that it would end up in the courts. At the end of the day the EU (and members states who are treaty bound to follow Rule of Law) may find that entire project get dragged out in lengthy lawsuits. When given the choice between breaking its own raison d'etre or keeping frozen assets in limbo indefinitely, the latter will win out.
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Feb 15, 2023 13:21
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BabyFur Denny posted:the USA can do whatever they want, but looking e.g. at Germany ... public health insurance needs more funding, education needs more money, public unemployment support and other social support systems need more money, and the list goes on. I find it hard to justify spending any extra money on more tanks, bombs and guns, especially considering that Russia just took itself out and is no longer a serious threat to any Western / NATO country. I think helping a country that has been under a genocidal invasion by their insane fascist/revanchist neighbor for the last 9 years is actually a good thing. But I dunno.
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Feb 15, 2023 13:45
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GundamHealer posted:I think helping a country that has been under a genocidal invasion by their insane fascist/revanchist neighbor for the last 9 years is actually a good thing. As an American it's frustrating because it plays into the narrative that "Europe only has good programs for its people because the US pays the defense bill." I realize logically that the US could choose to have nice things for its people--it's not just an either-or thing. But NATO asks for 2%. 2%! If the average person could pay X for housing, or 1.02X for housing that is safe for their families, they would. Most NATO nations can't be bothered to do that, though. Personally, I've felt for a long time that a stronger Europe would be better for the world. I love my country, but I thought Europe might temper America's more rash ventures if Europe were a more equal partner. The aid from numerous European countries to Ukraine has been great, but let's be honest: Europe cannot defend itself without America.
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Feb 15, 2023 13:58
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And now for something completely different. What Happens To Bands During War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEcDgW4IF80 The Meltdown of Russia's Music Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSgEW9LFFw8
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Feb 15, 2023 13:58
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GundamHealer posted:I think helping a country that has been under a genocidal invasion by their insane fascist/revanchist neighbor for the last 9 years is actually a good thing. Yeah Germany sends more MBT than any other country but that doesn't mean we need to build more tanks for ourselves?
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Feb 15, 2023 14:13
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BabyFur Denny posted:Yeah Germany sends more MBT than any other country but that doesn't mean we need to build more tanks for ourselves? What are you even trying to say?
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Feb 15, 2023 14:15
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Ynglaur posted:As an American it's frustrating because it plays into the narrative that "Europe only has good programs for its people because the US pays the defense bill." I realize logically that the US could choose to have nice things for its people--it's not just an either-or thing. But NATO asks for 2%. 2%! If the average person could pay X for housing, or 1.02X for housing that is safe for their families, they would. Most NATO nations can't be bothered to do that, though. I'm not a huge expert, but Perun who seems to know his stuff said that if Europe actually fully put its armies on the line in a conventional war, with no US troops involved, they'd still manage to get in Moscow. Even with <2% investment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKlIh_-U4bU
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Feb 15, 2023 14:17
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BabyFur Denny posted:Yeah Germany sends more MBT than any other country but that doesn't mean we need to build more tanks for ourselves? The gently caress are you on about? Russian imperial ambitions make it absolutely necessary to have a credible conventional response ready to shield the Baltics from aggression. That is literally the basis of Germany's continued prosperity.
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Feb 15, 2023 14:20
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BabyFur Denny posted:Yeah Germany sends more MBT than any other country but that doesn't mean we need to build more tanks for ourselves? This post is giving me a headache. Could you like, explain what this means?
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Feb 15, 2023 14:42
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Ynglaur posted:As an American it's frustrating because it plays into the narrative that "Europe only has good programs for its people because the US pays the defense bill." I realize logically that the US could choose to have nice things for its people--it's not just an either-or thing. But NATO asks for 2%. 2%! If the average person could pay X for housing, or 1.02X for housing that is safe for their families, they would. Most NATO nations can't be bothered to do that, though. What does defend mean in this case?
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Feb 15, 2023 14:48
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BabyFur Denny posted:the USA can do whatever they want, but looking e.g. at Germany ... public health insurance needs more funding, education needs more money, public unemployment support and other social support systems need more money, and the list goes on. I find it hard to justify spending any extra money on more tanks, bombs and guns, especially considering that Russia just took itself out and is no longer a serious threat to any Western / NATO country. Russia has not "took itself out" yet and without a decent guarantee that whatever leadership is going to follow Putin and his buddies would be aligned friendly towards Europe and former subjects (Putin initially was, as you may recall), the threat is going to remain.
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Feb 15, 2023 14:50
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Ynglaur posted:I realize logically that the US could choose to have nice things for its people--it's not just an either-or thing. But NATO asks for 2%. 2%! If the average person could pay X for housing, or 1.02X for housing that is safe for their families, they would. Most NATO nations can't be bothered to do that, though. The guns vs butter choice (and I stress that it is a choice both for politicians and citizens) is very real for any NATO country that is not the USA. 2% may seem like a paltry number but it represents a tremendous amount of money that politicians can earmark for social spending in order to buy votes. Canada currently spends around 1.3% of its GDP on defense and our military is a joke notwithstanding the fine folks in uniform. They are underpaid, under equipped, and we have to look for pocket change to buy a handful of f35s to replace 40 year old Hornets. That 0.7% represents a 50% increase in the defense budget of ~30 billion CDN per annum. We just saw our Federal Government agree to 28 billion in additional payouts to health care. Anyone suggesting that we raise taxes is politically not viable. Anyone suggesting that we not augment the healthcare system politically not viable.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:21
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fatherboxx posted:Russia has not "took itself out" yet and without a decent guarantee that whatever leadership is going to follow Putin and his buddies would be aligned friendly towards Europe and former subjects (Putin initially was, as you may recall), the threat is going to remain. Yeah, Russia didn't take itself out, it has scrapped a lot of hardware and lost personell but it also gained a lot of valuable real world practice and institutional knowledge. And hardware can probably be built up with Russian heavy industry and Chinese imports, if not to such ridiculous levels as the Soviet stocks. Russia will probably be fit for fight soon enough. So unless the EU want to continue to be completely subservient to the US it should probably make sure it doesn't completely neglect it's military, again.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:37
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Zudgemud posted:Yeah, Russia didn't take itself out, it has scrapped a lot of hardware and lost personell but it also gained a lot of valuable real world practice and institutional knowledge. And hardware can probably be built up with Russian heavy industry and Chinese imports, if not to such ridiculous levels as the Soviet stocks. Russia will probably be fit for fight soon enough. So unless the EU want to continue to be completely subservient to the US it should probably make sure it doesn't completely neglect it's military, again. I'm not sure Russia has sufficiently competent institutions to gain knowledge, and a lot of that real world practice seems to be "If you build a trench system wrong your whole BTG can be taken out with a single HIMARS strike", which is a lesson you can only learn as many times as you have BTGs.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:54
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There are a lot of articles about the west realising they have glaring munitions shortfalls in stockpile and production, there are already some baby steps being taken to counter this, so hopefully 1) it'll be sufficient and 2) the vast majority of increased production goes straight towards where the war is actually happening, rather than just refilling reserves and then transferring Ukraine the surplus 5 years from now Both points so far are huge question marks, at least as far as I've seen
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Feb 15, 2023 16:03
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yaffle posted:I'm not sure Russia has sufficiently competent institutions to gain knowledge, and a lot of that real world practice seems to be "If you build a trench system wrong your whole BTG can be taken out with a single HIMARS strike", which is a lesson you can only learn as many times as you have BTGs. You don't get anywhere in a war by underestimating your enemy. It's always best to assume they are better and stronger than you and run your strategies and tactics based on that rather than assuming they're all clowning around out there. The Russians already made that mistake once in Feb 2022 and they appear to have learned from that at least. Lets not forget as "incompetent" as the Russian army appears in 30 second curated twitter videos they have inflicted unfathomable amounts of casualties and pain and suffering on the Ukrainian army and civilians. So despite there being a turkey shoot and massive Russian casualties they appear to be giving as good as they're getting and Ukraine does not have the kind of manpower reserves that Russia does to keep taking those losses. The only way they can overcome this block now is through superior equipment and training so that for every 1 Ukrainian casualty you get 6 to 8 Russian ones. Lets hope those Bradleys, Leopards and other pending western equipment will be sufficient to turn the tide or at least shift the initiative to Ukraine so they can engage in some maneuver warfare and cut the supply lines for the Russians.
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Feb 15, 2023 16:24
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DarkCrawler posted:What does defend mean in this case? If the US had not supported Ukraine, Ukraine would have fallen. If the US did not act as the guarantor of Europe's security, the Baltics would be next. Could Poland defend itself against such a resurgent Russia, perhaps with support from the rest of Europe? Perhaps. But I don't think even Poland could do so. That's what I mean.
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Feb 15, 2023 16:50
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The thing I find really frustrating about the whole "The Russians are about to find out why the US doesn't have healthcare" meme is that US healthcare spending is absurdly inefficient and we spend more than any other country as a % of GDP and get worse results. If we switched to pretty much any universal healthcare model we would have better health outcomes and have more money to spend on explody things for both ourselves and allies. Maybe that should be the pitch: Let's have universal healthcare so we can afford more aircraft carriers!
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Feb 15, 2023 16:51
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To be fair, that would be ridiculous in a very specifically American way, and so the chances of it happening this decade are at least 50%. Edit:  https://www.ft.com/content/7e3d95c3-8118-4ade-ae0c-68512383b7b4 Christo Grozev thankfully not quite getting the polonium tea everyone expected for BM.quote:This month Grozev learnt that Russian assassins were actively chasing him in his home base of Vienna with the help of local collaborators. “Austrian authorities are of the opinion that I am not safe [there],” he told me. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 15, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 17:41
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Kraftwerk posted:You don't get anywhere in a war by underestimating your enemy. It's always best to assume they are better and stronger than you and run your strategies and tactics based on that rather than assuming they're all clowning around out there. The Russians already made that mistake once in Feb 2022 and they appear to have learned from that at least. The flipside is that there's no actual advantage to insisting on pretending your enemy is an invincible juggernaut, which is actually what everyone was doing before this war happened. And it actually was a huge creator of the mess we are in right now, because everyone being absolutely loving terrified of Russia and cowering and crying in the corner even when we were nowhere near Russia emboldened it to get away with what it has been doing for the past twenty years. And why shouldn't Russia just invade everyone nearby? After all, everyone believed they were the 2nd strongest army in the world, and the only army stronger refused to do anything. So it was the perfect time to rebuild the Soviet Empire. And we only supported Ukraine as we could without giving them anything but training. And that was enough to block Russia's knockout blow.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:22
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cinci zoo sniper posted:To be fair, that would be ridiculous in a very specifically American way, and so the chances of it happening this decade are at least 50%. I figured it was just a matter time. I hope his family is safe.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:23
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cinci zoo sniper posted:To be fair, that would be ridiculous in a very specifically American way, and so the chances of it happening this decade are at least 50%. Trying to keep up with this thread has dulled me to individual names. What did he do to piss off the russians?
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Feb 15, 2023 19:30
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OAquinas posted:Trying to keep up with this thread has inured me to individual names. What did he do to piss off the russians? Reading the article does reveal the answer to that.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:31
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Reading the article does reveal the answer to that. It seems to be paywalled so a summary would help.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:33
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Burns posted:It seems to be paywalled so a summary would help. https://archive.is/IpV0H
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Feb 15, 2023 19:36
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Burns posted:It seems to be paywalled so a summary would help. Please don't expect or ask me to post “warez”. Being unable to bypass FT's paywall, or any other referenced in this thread – especially when people post explicit instructions on doing that every other page, including this very own page roughly two dozen posts ago – is a skill issue.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:37
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OAquinas posted:Trying to keep up with this thread has dulled me to individual names. What did he do to piss off the russians? Lead russia investigator with Bellingcat.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:42
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Kraftwerk posted:You don't get anywhere in a war by underestimating your enemy. It's always best to assume they are better and stronger than you and run your strategies and tactics based on that rather than assuming they're all clowning around out there. This is absolutely, hilariously untrue. The goal is to actually make an accurate estimate of enemy capabilities and intentions so you can make realistic plans. Assuming the enemy is 10 feet tall and bulletproof is utterly useless.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:54
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sean10mm posted:This is absolutely, hilariously untrue. The goal is to actually make an accurate estimate of enemy capabilities and intentions so you can make realistic plans. Assuming the enemy is 10 feet tall and bulletproof is utterly useless. What about all the crazy fears the US had about Soviet era capabilities? For instance a huge stink was mad out of the Foxbat before a defector landed it and it turned out it wasn't as big of a threat as originally thought.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:13
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Mind the missile gap!
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Feb 15, 2023 20:41
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Is the topic intelligence analysis for war planning in the context of Ukraine in 2023, or historical attempts to justify defense budget fuckery from back in the Cold War era? Because they're very different topics and conflating them seems disingenuous. The Ukrainian army's G2 equivalent is absolutely not being wrong on purpose by willfully overestimating things as some kind of galaxy brain...something. They're trying to accurately describe reality to planners so they can make realistic plans.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Lead russia investigator with Bellingcat. Thank you. All I needed to know--Bellingcat peeps are probably on more death lists than Rushdie.
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Feb 15, 2023 21:02
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sean10mm posted:Is the topic intelligence analysis for war planning in the context of Ukraine in 2023, or historical attempts to justify defense budget fuckery from back in the Cold War era? Because they're very different topics and conflating them seems disingenuous. Nobody has said that Ukraine is wrong or willfully overestimating things. They probably have a drat good idea. We were responding to someone who said that WE should intentionally overestimate Russia. Which is what I was responding to. Everyone outside of Ukraine extremely overestimated Russia and that was a large part of the reason why everyone just let Russia take Georgia and Crimea. About the only people who seemed to have a good idea was post-Crimea US, who started working to help Ukraine reform and arm for round 2. Everyone else thought it was basically a waste of time and money. That's why there was no real support until after Ukraine held off the initial invasion. No one thought they had a chance until they made it clear that they did.
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Feb 15, 2023 21:24
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The way I've heard it phrased by defense industry folks is something to the effect of, "You want the best information you can get, and in the absence of actual knowledge of their capabilities, assume the (realistic) worst so you don't get a nasty surprise."
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Feb 15, 2023 22:06
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Please don't expect or ask me to post “warez”. Being unable to bypass FT's paywall, or any other referenced in this thread – especially when people post explicit instructions on doing that every other page, including this very own page roughly two dozen posts ago – is a skill issue. Don't get pissy when people want summaries to pay walled sites, you loving bellend. The guy wanted to know why that particular person was a target and you did nothing to answer the question, at all. What a lovely, snide response (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Zedsdeadbaby fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Feb 15, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 22:16
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