Jasper Tin Neck posted:

It's a bad machine translation of the corresponding passage in the Finnish Wikipedia, which says that Kouvola station was built on suitable sandy soil that a bunch of railway engineers pointed out at the request of a local industrialist.

Speaking of railways, the Crimean bridge gets all the press, but if I'm not completely mistaken, destroying four bridges is what it takes to cut off the Donbas from the Russian railway network. The catch is that all those bridges are in Russia, so they've been out of range for the Ukrainians until now.

My question is, does the continued existence of these bridges owe mostly to:

1. the general difficulty of scoring a structurally critical hit on a bridge, even with a weapon like the Storm Shadow?
   
2. the thicket of AD and EW assigned to protect them?
   
3. western powers disallowing the use of western weapon systems to strike into Russia?
   
4. Russia moving away from railway-based logistics?
   
5. something else?
   

Ionicpsycho posted:

Shamelessly stolen from the other thread:

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1664518403799883778


This sounds destabilizing as hell.

Ionicpsycho posted:

"Gather round children, and let me tell you of my time in the Disney© 3rd Amphibious Division, the Daffy Ducks."

Ionicpsycho posted:

"Gather round children, and let me tell you of my time in the Disney© 3rd Amphibious Division, the Daffy Ducks."

AlternateNu posted:

Daffy is Looney Toons!

Disney is Donald & company

AlternateNu posted:

Daffy is Looney Toons!

Disney is Donald & company

Nystral posted:

Rodger Rabbit infers that both are part of a larger metaverse of cartoons and therefore are interoperable in our post-facts society.

Nystral posted:

Rodger Rabbit infers that both are part of a larger metaverse of cartoons and therefore are interoperable in our post-facts society.

brocked posted:

Implies, you uncultured swine!

McGavin posted:

Roger, you uncultured swine!

Bronze Fonz posted:

Drafty Ducks.

A.o.D. posted:

Ducking Drafts

A.o.D. posted:

Everything but moving away from railway logistics. You can't completely reinvent your logistical system in the amount of time that has elapsed, especially during an actual honest to God large scale conflict.

Additionally, another metric is how difficult would it be to repair/replace the bridges in question. What makes the Kerch Straight bridge such an attractive target is once you get past a critical threshold of damage that bridge is DONE and you're forced to either take the long way around or rely on rail barges, neither of which are solutions to your logistical issues, just bandaids on the situation.

Also, truck logistics would still be a feasible option for Donbass, if highly undesirable. That's not to say you wouldn't want to drop those bridges. They're still highly valuable strategic targets. It's just that all of those factors weigh in targeting priority.

With all that said, if Ukraine decided to prioritize those bridges over Kerch or some other target, I'd have no criticisms to offer.

Nystral posted:

Rodger Rabbit infers that both are part of a larger metaverse of cartoons and therefore are interoperable in our post-facts society.

Godholio posted:

Recently rewatched this for the first time since childhood. What a great loving movie, and it's a miracle it was ever made. The goddamned cartoon weasels are carrying real guns. The effects are loving insane.

Antigravitas posted:

I, FWIW, share the criticisms of IPSec. I run a few site to site tunnels using it and the sheer amount of redundant (and unsafe!) options you can choose is ridiculous. I would not be surprised if you could accidentally select to encrypt your traffic with ROT16 (or ROT256 )

e: Reading an IT sec thread is unwise, it just leads you to the correct conclusion that everything is incredibly hosed and it's a miracle that society hasn't collapsed

bird food bathtub posted:

Look up some behind the scenes 'how it's made' stuff. They didn't have CGI or modern photo trickery so it's some real wild stuff. Iron skeletons zipping around tracks in the floor, people acting along side complete fakes that will get cartoon'd over later.

Lemniscate Blue posted:

It really is the peak of the practical effects art.

cr0y posted:

quote:

WASHINGTON — Equipment drawn from the U.S. Army’s Kuwait-based pre-positioned stock bound for Ukraine was not ready for combat operations, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found.

During the inspector general’s audit of that pre-positioned stock area, the fifth of seven such locations around the world, “we identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the May 23 report stated.

All six of the M777 howitzers and 25 of 29 M1167 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were not “mission ready” and required repairs before U.S. European Command could send the equipment to Ukraine.

quote:

The 401st Army Field Support Battalion in Kuwait is responsible for overseeing contractor maintenance work, which includes issuing equipment. Army Materiel Command confirmed the contractor conducting the work at the site is Amentum, which is based in Chantilly, Virginia.

Because the battalion did not ensure the contractor was meeting its maintenance requirements for approximately 19 months on M777 howitzers, an Army Materiel Command senior representative from Kuwait issued a request for assistance, bringing in a U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command mobile repair team from Anniston Army Depot, Alabama.

When the team arrived at Camp Arifjan in March 2022, the contractor provided a howitzer that it said was fully mission capable. But the weapon system was not maintained according to the standard technical manual, per the mobile repair team, and “ ‘would have killed somebody [the operator],’ in its current condition,” the report stated.

Loden Taylor posted:

This is what you get when you stop printing PS Magazine:

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/05/31/equipment-for-ukraine-drawn-from-kuwait-wasnt-combat-ready-ig-says/



Glad I'm out, motor pool Mondays about to get intense

quote:

The head of Army Sustainment Command explained, in response to the report, that the service’s funding level for APS maintenance in Kuwait was 30% of the validated requirements in fiscal 2023 — about $27.8 million of the $91.3 million requirement.

And the commander stated the contractor “is not contractually obligated or appropriately resourced to maintain [APS] equipment” at standards laid out in the technical manual the inspector general followed to make determinations regarding mission-capable readiness of the equipment.

The inspector general disagreed that the contractor was not obligated to follow the same technical manual used by the inspector general and also noted in the report that the Army obligated nearly $1 billion from Aug. 31, 2016, through April 13, 2023, for the APS location.

orange juche posted:

"The contractor was not properly resourced or contractually obligated to maintain APS equipment"? What the gently caress do you pay them for then? They get paid to keep the poo poo in fighting shape, to the manual, so that if poo poo gets real and it is needed, it can be pulled out of storage onto a ro-ro and sent wherever it is needed, without needing refurbishment. They got paid nearly a billion dollars to maintain the equipment, and they spent it on hookers and blow.
The head of Army Sustainment Command is getting a kickback I bet from the contracting company.

Midjack posted:

If some dipshit COR didn't explicitly write it into the statement of work that the manual would be followed then that's true. That would be hilarious negligence even by Department of Defense contracting standards if it's true.

psydude posted:

The worst CORs seem to be active duty military, because it's an additional duty for them and they're only in the role for a couple of years before moving. It's definitely something that should be a full-time DoD civilian.

e: No offense, mustang.

psydude posted:

The worst CORs seem to be active duty military, because it's an additional duty for them and they're only in the role for a couple of years before moving. It's definitely something that should be a full-time DoD civilian.

e: No offense, mustang.

quote:

According to an article published on June 4, Danilov said that Russia had lost 22,816 people in Bakhmut since Sept. 1, 2022, around the time when convicted criminals recruited from prisons began augmenting Russia's front-line troops.

Icon Of Sin posted:

Am I parsing this right? Russian: Ukrainian losses in Bakhmut being 7.5:1? That’s a weird phrasing, but idk if that’s the normal way you’d say it in Ukrainian/Russian.

Icon Of Sin posted:

Am I parsing this right? Russian: Ukrainian losses in Bakhmut being 7.5:1? That’s a weird phrasing, but idk if that’s the normal way you’d say it in Ukrainian/Russian.

https://kyivindependent.com/danilov-ukraine-lost-7-5-times-fewer-troops-than-russians-in-bakhmut/

Also from the same article:

e: math says that’s ~83 KIA per day, from 1 Sept 2022 to today (276 days).

orange juche posted:

I doubt it's as high as 7.5 to 1, but Russian troops are clearly getting mauled for every inch of ground they take or lose.