|
Lostconfused posted:Nice to see the new Ace Combat coming along. It's a pretty good skin, ngl
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 12:28 |
|
|
im being told there are 3 kinds of aces.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:01
|
|
|
Wasn't there a lovely movie with like this AI pilot that was a sphere computer?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:05
|
|
|
cat botherer posted:Wasn't there a lovely movie with like this AI pilot that was a sphere computer? Stealth was not a lovely movie 😡
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
You see this every single day where the "corporate facing" parts of the civil service start repeating "stakeholders" and "public-private partnerships" like a mantra and aren't able to articulate policy where military needs are met without some middleman extracting rent. They don't even have to do anything but they must be included because government-only projects are anathema to them. I don't get it, it's the most loving annoying thing in the world having people from BAE and GD come "advise" on our own loving needs because the government can't even order a mortar or howitzer without our good friends the defence contractors having input in every stage from determining the requirement, to the design process, to procurement - and in all of these aspects their working "with" us seems suspiciously like ... I don't know. It exists for an ideological reason for the whiz kid ECs (Economics and Social Science Services specialist civil service employees), but it doesn't seem to benefit us, the nation, get anything done. Still, they must be included because idk the managers, officers, engineers and analysts produced by the civil service and military need the fresh ideas brought by the Free Market or whatever. So you just have Dimaco become Colt Canada, become part of Colt CZ Group, which now dictates what small arms will be, and not only are the jobs and money not here, we don't even have a hand in the design like the old days. A Czech-US holding company is considered to be a better steward of national interests than soldiers, and bureaucrats of our own military and civil service because it's private. I don't get it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:12
|
|
|
Real hurthling! posted:im being told there are 3 kinds of aces. I only learned a few days ago that ace is slang for asexual
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:22
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Stealth was not a lovely movie 😡 Stealth was just a lovely reboot of Deal of the Century 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:24
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:
Real hurthling! posted:the wests leaders arent actually in charge of anything except public relations its not that people who understand don't exist, its that the entire system has been reengineered over the last 70 years to remove them from authority for ~reasons~ vyelkin posted:I think another part of the problem is that Western leaders have completely internalized contemporary economics. One thing you see repeatedly in articles questioning why Russia hasn't collapsed under the weight of massive sanctions from "larger" economies is comparisons based in GDP numbers, like "Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's". The warped valuations of different forms of labour and capital in modern technologized and financialized economies mean that even if the people in charge understand systems, they're understanding them from a perspective that legitimately thinks a Silicon Valley techbro produces 20x the economic value of a Russian tank factory worker, because the techbro makes US$200k a year and the tank factory worker makes the equivalent of US$5k a year. But when it comes to fighting a war, building tanks is much more valuable to the physical economy and its warmaking potential than figuring out how to make a chatbot not say the n-word or programming an app that tells you where the nearest public toilet is. Trying to assess countries' real economic power and potential to wage industrialized warfare based on absolute GDP numbers is obviously ludicrous, but that's how we've trained a generation of politicians and decision-makers to think so that's how they understand the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Emerson_Humanitarian_Trust quote:The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust (BEHT) is a strategic grain reserve of commodities and cash held in trust to supplement food aid made available under P.L. 480 programs. The Trust can hold up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, corn, sorghum, and rice. The authorizing statute also authorizes the Trust to hold cash in lieu of commodities. quote:In 2008, as global food prices spiked, the remaining commodities (about 915,000 metric tons) were sold. Since then, the trust is solely a cash reserve, invested in low-risk, short-term securities or instruments.[2] The trust allows the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Food for Peace (FFP) to respond to food crises in other countries and release and use funds for famine relief in cases where other resources are not available.[2] Since it no longer holds commodities, it can respond to local food crises outside the US, but not to a global one that affects the USA itself. The trust is still active as of 2017. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:24
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:I think another part of the problem is that Western leaders have completely internalized contemporary economics. now this one is spot on. internalized to the point of it being the language of the elite.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:26
|
|
|
Delta-Wye posted:ive been enjoying this former soviet chud named Martyanov that posts rants on youtube under the name smoothiex12. he likes to promote analytical approaches to topics and is kind of an rear end in a top hat about things i also hate This kinda works but when you apply it to industrial warfare you can easily miss the forest for the trees. Back during WWII there was an entire anylitics division that plotted out poo poo like production and efficient use of bombs, it's where McNamara got his start in government. We had the same thing in Vietnam but, again, forest for the trees. The people doing the math never understood the war that they were fighting so they got bogged down in poo poo like bodycounts and destroying logistics networks that either didn't exist or didn't exist in the form that they imagined. I imagine we have some sort of department that does the same sort of work now, and if they're doing anything except telling DC pols and Military jerks to avoid war with China at all costs then they're absolutely worthless.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:32
|
|
|
Zeroisanumber posted:I imagine we have some sort of department that does the same sort of work now, and if they're doing anything except telling DC pols and Military jerks to avoid war with China at all costs then they're absolutely worthless. Not really, actually, because for some reason this is mostly entrusted to private entities. For example, the CAF just paid McKinsey to consult on its own working culture. There's this idea that the Private Sector better understands government than government itself.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:35
|
|
|
Delta-Wye posted:its not that people who understand don't exist, its that the entire system has been reengineered over the last 70 years to remove them from authority for ~reasons~ because that’s how your make the outcome you want to happen, happen rather than the outcome the systems folks tell you should happen. think about it this way. You are a politician. there is a government agency you could ask to model problem X. but you already know what you want to do about problem X. if you got the agency to model they’re going to do it right. you don’t know the outcome you are going to get. if you got a consultancy. you have control over the scope and input of what you ask them to do. this means you can control the situation, they’re going to reach the conclusion you want because you have the ability to control what they can look at and what they can consider. then at the end you have a paper, you get to say look these smart folks, the smartest folks, they think we should do this (which is whatever you wanted). it’s not a lack or ignorance of systems, it’s a knowledge of how to gently caress with modeling to get it to tell you what you want to hear so you get to do what you wanted to do. The model rather than telling you about reality becomes a piece of evidence to support a preconceived thesis (and the thesis came from the economics you think in).
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:37
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:Not really, actually, because for some reason this is mostly entrusted to private entities. McKinsey is who you call in when you want to pay people a lot of money to tell you what you want to hear or justify your inhumanity.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:40
|
|
|
I agree with you, but it leads to, at least in my experience, the models being evidently wrong, in the process of failing, unable to predict events etc. and then... well this is where my exasperation comes from. GWOT was a great example because they had all of these really elaborate models that never, ever worked. You're telling me that cutting in defence contractors and dumping money on consultants will build a civil society in Kandahar Province, but there's barely even goods in the local markets and people and goods can't travel, so what is being accomplished here? The mayor has consultants, the governor has consultants, consultants were brought on for the ANP. Money is being spent on all sorts of things - like having contractors build civil engineering projects instead of our own military construction engineers, or the ANA's (which are being trained by contractors instead of us), or the local government hiring people and supervising construction directly, so... we have PRTs supervising the province not being reconstructed. Digging a well goes from a thing military engineers could do in a day to... this really elaborately detailed plan, that somehow involves all of these entities, which are supposed to make things more efficient, but doesn't actually happen. People in one village support the Taliban because the new road bypasses them and they feel like they'll be left out of the economy, and of course, had told the government that, had told ISAF that, but the consultants said the optimum route should be XYZ, but now it's too dangerous to construct, so... again, we have engineers, we're supposed to be training Afghan engineers, road building is one of the oldest military projects in history, so this could just be done by us, with our capacity, and not in a way that pisses everyone off, because even if we don't know the local terrain or economy or whatever, we have a vested interest in not being shot at and have talked to people who would prefer the road connect their village than shoot at us... and still this bullshit happens anyway. So, like the "optimum" flow of goods is that no goods flow at all because the road isn't built, but the cost of not building the road exceeds the cost for us, the ANA, local workmen to build it by... I can't even imagine how much.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 18:50
|
|
|
the grift and demolishing of any government institutions capable of actually helping people is the point, hth
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:15
|
|
|
Zeroisanumber posted:This kinda works but when you apply it to industrial warfare you can easily miss the forest for the trees. Back during WWII there was an entire anylitics division that plotted out poo poo like production and efficient use of bombs, it's where McNamara got his start in government. i disagree about the forest for the trees, i think martyanov's argument is a bit different (and im probably not doing it justice). the us media is loving the wonder weapon angle or stories of minor victories here and there, and that is all bullshit in the long run with industrial war. individual stories of heroism like the ghost of kiev or powerful western weapons like himars don't matter - rates of production matter. you can boil it down to which side is producing the most amount of steel, warm bodies, etc - basic input goods define everything downstream. production rates and consumption rates turn into a system of differential equations which can then be used to determine likely outcomes, messaging doesn't matter in predicting outcomes or best next moves with this process. Bar Ran Dun posted:it’s not a lack or ignorance of systems, it’s a knowledge of how to gently caress with modeling to get it to tell you what you want to hear so you get to do what you wanted to do. The model rather than telling you about reality becomes a piece of evidence to support a preconceived thesis (and the thesis came from the economics you think in). i don't disagree with what you're saying, but i feel like were posting past each other. youre describing a mechanism by which the narrative is formed - what happens when reality refuses to cooperate? you can keep forming "team b"s to tell you what you want to hear, but ISW narratives won't storm trenches
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:I agree with you, but it leads to, at least in my experience, the models being evidently wrong, in the process of failing, unable to predict events etc. and then... well this is where my exasperation comes from. yes it leads straight to poo poo outcomes. with no accountability for the folks at fault, because they covered their rear end with the bad models and consultancy reports.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:18
|
|
|
Filthy Hans posted:Stealth was just a lovely reboot of Deal of the Century charged particles. zero time of flight weaponry.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:24
|
|
|
Delta-Wye posted:i disagree about the forest for the trees, i think martyanov's argument is a bit different (and im probably not doing it justice). the us media is loving the wonder weapon angle or stories of minor victories here and there, and that is all bullshit in the long run with industrial war. individual stories of heroism like the ghost of kiev or powerful western weapons like himars don't matter - rates of production matter. you can boil it down to which side is producing the most amount of steel, warm bodies, etc - basic input goods define everything downstream. production rates and consumption rates turn into a system of differential equations which can then be used to determine likely outcomes, messaging doesn't matter in predicting outcomes or best next moves with this process. Just to add to this, a colleague was working on historical war planning. Mobilization schemes, that sort of thing. Governments could universally plan around 3 things: (Male) Births by year (draft classes), tonnes of steel produced, length of railway track and amount of rolling stock. This explains the outcomes of the American Civil War, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, and validates the strategic planning of the parties involved. It also explains the outcome of the World Wars. Now you can quibble about things that might be added, like tonnes of fertilizer produced, shipyard capacity, merchant navy tonnage, but I think that measuring just those 3 things is all you need for strategic planning. So, with that in mind, the idea that Italy could defeat the Russian Federation because of its larger GDP is so preposterous on the face of it. You really do have to be off in financial capital la la land, or maybe not understand what a military is, how it works, to think that you can seamlessly convert (untaxed) money in the speculative economy into beans and bayonets.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:30
|
|
|
um ackshually i think you'll find that the free market civic lets you rush build units with gold 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:36
|
|
|
What about rods from god but it's dropping a couple pallettes of pennies instead of a tungsten utility pole?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:41
|
|
|
Though, Italy is a funny example because how they industrialized was pretty funny side-to-side with the Soviet project. The Art of Objects: The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture, 1878-1928 The Art of Objects is a cultural history of early Italian industrialism, set against the political, social, and intellectual background of post-unification Italy, and a cutting-edge investigation of the formation of Italy's industrial culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Providing a close examination of several objects of mass consumption, including watches, photographs, bicycles, gramophones, cigarettes, and toys, author Luca Cottini explores the transformation of these objects from commercial items into aesthetic and philosophical icons. By focusing on the cultural significance of these objects as they enter the market and appear in contemporary works of art and literature, The Art of Objects outlines a comprehensive view of the age between the unification of Italy and Fascism, encompassing production and consumption, aesthetics and entrepreneurship, industry and the humanistic tradition. The observation of the slow formation of new languages, practices, and experiences around these objects also provides valuable insight into the creative laboratory of Italy's early industrial culture. By reconstructing the origins of the Italian culture of design, the book ultimately investigates Italy's critical reception of industrialism, the nation's so-called "imperfect" modernization, and its ongoing quest for an original way to modernity. Baby's First Industrialization posted:Before these developments (first protectionist policies in 1878) the Italian economy (mainly based on agriculture) had faced a long period of stagnation, and, since unification, industry had been limited to textiles (55.4 per cent of the total industrial production in 1878) and food manufacture (oil, tomato preserves, and pasta). Italy’s industrial growth had slowed after 1861, owing to the exigencies of political and social stability: the need to square the national debt after the wars of independence (a goal reached in 1875); the urgency to endow the new nation with infrastructures (railways, harbours, tunnels), and the necessity to create a uniform productive system (laws, taxation, market) across the peninsula. Unlike England and Germany, which had rapidly expanded between the first Exposition of London in 1851 and the economic crisis of 1873, Italy had not developed a national industry, because of the limited size of its domestic marketplace and its reliance on foreign sources (for raw materials, technical and entrepreneurial skills, and imported goods). As in the pre-unification period, it continued instead to excel on international markets and expositions in the manufacture of luxury goods (glass, porcelain, coaches, and cabinets) and in the export of distinguished local products (e.g., silk from Como, marble from Carrara, straw hats from Carpi, majolica plates from Faenza, accordions from Castelfidardo, and citrus from Sicily). If you were ever wondering about why Italian cars seemingly don't have interchangeable parts, for whatever reason Italy industrialized along the lines of an artistic movement, which was laudable in theory but hilarious in practice as they put so much drat craft into everything the production of even basic goods lagged behind as they worked on timepieces, bicycles and gramophones.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
Throb Robinson posted:I'm a geopolitical dummy but if we got into a hot war with China like our Government is getting it's dick hard for, what's the chance that everyone else we piss off with our aggression joins up with them? Thinking about Russia and Iran being passive as we try to destroy the productive engine of the world. The war and the world probably end a half hour later if the US and China ever get into a shooting war
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:58
|
|
|
Arguably, high end luxury goods and machinery is still something excels at today and keeps them going, the problem is particularly Italian industrialists and their lackeys greatly overestimated their ability to adapt to industrial warfare (they couldn’t, twice in a row).
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:27
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Arguably, high end luxury goods and machinery is still something excels at today and keeps them going, the problem is particularly Italian industrialists and their lackeys greatly overestimated their ability to adapt to industrial warfare (they couldn’t, twice in a row). we just let them change sides both times so why would they learn
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:because that’s how your make the outcome you want to happen, happen rather than the outcome the systems folks tell you should happen. I think there’s a implied kind of “great man” theory behind your posts here, that these elite operators come into the institutions of power and manipulate them to serve their specific desires independent of institutions themselves. What I think is missing is that these consultancy games, these modeling tricks, etc. also have a corrosive effect on the institutions, such that they produce more degraded “great men,” which further undermines the institutions, etc. The result is imperial breakdown that spends a billion dollars attacking balloons, not a bumbling bureaucracy that can somehow snap back to effective imperial management once the shooting war with China starts.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
Beautiful ships and submarines and twenty three types of submarine torpedoes lol (not a joke, Regia Marina had 23 types in the inventory).
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:Beautiful ships and submarines and twenty three types of submarine torpedoes lol (not a joke, Regia Marina had 23 types in the inventory). they'd be eating carbonara in Eritrea today if they had figured out how to launch some of them from a bicycle
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:32
|
|
|
Delta-Wye posted:i don't disagree with what you're saying, but i feel like were posting past each other. The difference ignorant vs corrupted.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:47
|
|
|
Centrist Committee posted:oh yeah it’s a feed back loop my quibble would be rail, that dates that analysis to that particular historical period. ships are more important logistically now, much more important. they got larger starting after WWII and cargo operations became significantly faster for all vessel categories (and those categories didn’t exist until the decades after the war).
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:01
|
|
|
i don't think chinese strategic planners (or anyone involved in logistics in the current war in ukraine for that matter) would agree that ships are far more important than rail
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:08
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:my quibble would be rail, that dates that analysis to that particular historical period. ships are more important logistically now, much more important. they got larger starting after WWII and cargo operations became significantly faster for all vessel categories (and those categories didn’t exist until the decades after the war). Yeah but if you're trying to figure out how many guns and tanks a country can produce internally, rail is how the materials and products are getting moved around within a country. other than archipelago type countries i guess. Hell, even in the us, a country that is very racist against trains, you can see infantry fighting vehicles and tanks riding the rails like the hobos of yore I guess hobos weren't covered in special tarps and lashed to the train cars with steel belts but whatever
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:16
|
|
|
taiwan is ~2 years from D-Day and the United States sends dwight schrute inside of michael scott to meet & greet, get updates, socialise, etc
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:17
|
|
|
Even people who know how hosed the west is seem to believe, or maybe hope that if poo poo hits the fan then the adults will come back and take charge. What I'm learning here is that there is nothing left for them to take charge of. Institutions have been completely hollowed out. When I think of what would be necessary for the US to win a war with China, the complete restructuring of our industry and government. The way the government would have to wrest control back from the private sector. The way officials and ceos would have to face consequences for loving up. The way labor power would be resurgent. I half jokingly think those changes needed to win would be more devastating to the people in power than losing the war. I guess none of that matters because nukes.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:32
|
|
|
Hatebag posted:Yeah but if you're trying to figure out how many guns and tanks a country can produce internally, rail is how the materials and products are getting moved around within a country. other than archipelago type countries i guess. no not really. it’s very much barges and ships in the US. even far inland in the rust belt inland. it’s ships on the Great Lakes and barges down the Mississippi and out the seaway. steel manufacturing is almost always port based and where it concentrated to in the United States over the last 70 years is definitely port based I don’t think any primarily rail based centers of production here survived. outside out boutique arc furnace stuff.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:32
|
|
|
what y’all are describing is just yes men it seems to me. is there a system that doesn’t reward yes men?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
Femur posted:what y’all are describing is just yes men it seems to me. is there a system that doesn’t reward yes men? eventually yes, but as they say you can run on for a long time https://youtu.be/eJlN9jdQFSc
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:44
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:no not really. it’s very much barges and ships in the US. Aren't all the m1 tanks manufactured in lima, oh? That's pretty far from navigable waterways and just happens to be right along a freight rail line. If you're saying they take the tanks to lake erie and then to the Atlantic on barges I'll buy it but they still have to get them to lake erie and that's going to be on a train. Plus they have to get raw materials to the factory. I'm not an expert on where weapons are manufactured but it looks like general dynamics makes artillery guns and from what i can see their factories are all in the baltimore-dc area along a bunch of rail lines and not waterways, so if they have to bring materials to the factories they're going to need rail, and likewise for shipping em out. Maybe it would be more accurate to consider the entirety of the logistics chain because plenty of war stuff is going out on planes too but i think the point was to simplify the analysis
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:50
|
|
|
video: non-literal boatload of tanks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj6nozFKwL0
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 21:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 12:28 |
|
|
Time to set sail to Bakhmut on the high seas
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 22:00
|
|