(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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LifeSunDeath posted:power doesn't care if things descend into chaos. if putin is weakened, powers can start nibbling at the edges of russia, internally things may shift and collapse, maybe it takes 3 more leaders before one isn't killed in the process of gaining power, who knows. or maybe the systemic apathy in russia is so strong nothing will change and putin will live out his days making everyone miserable. The problem isn't that Russian power brokers care about the fate of Russia, it's that they care about the fate of their own asses - right now, as far as I can see anyone who sits in the top seat, especially through violence, is painting a target on their backs. Power for power's sake is only useful if you think you can survive the process. I do agree with this guy though: the holy poopacy posted:I think the key takeaway isn't so much that people see the throne up for grabs (since no one wants it) as it is that people see the throne doesn't matter as much as they thought it did. Prigozhin just dramatically pushed the envelope on the level of infighting you can get away with, I expect power struggles between personal fiefdoms are going to get much bloodier going forward. It's not going to be about trying to overthrow Putin, that's a poisoned chalice, it's about getting a leg up on That Bastard in the Other Ministry trying to muscle in on your turf.
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Jun 28, 2023 20:30
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Mr. Apollo posted:It looks like Russia is apply camouflage to its naval vessels in the Black Sea in a response to naval drone attacks. I can't imagine this actually being very useful when there's such thing as non-visual satellite data, but I'm not a drone pilot.
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Jun 28, 2023 20:32
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General Armageddonsent-to-the-gulag
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Jun 28, 2023 20:33
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fatherboxx posted:Clickbaity title since the arrest is explicitly mentioned only on telegram channel, probably going to see something concrete leaking tomorrow if it is that bad
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Jun 28, 2023 20:36
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Cpt_Obvious posted:a seemingly bottomless supply of shells. Haven't they actually burned through most of their stockpiles already, though? Leading to bizarre circumstances like buying artillery shells they sold to North Korea back, units only being able to do one or two fire missions per day, pulling ancient equipment out not to replace losses, but because they can fire some other kind of shell that is still stocked that newer artillery can't fire, etc?
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Jun 28, 2023 20:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Arresting your most competent general is a fine Russian tradition. Wouldn't count the winter missile strikes campaign as a sign of some strategic competence. Surovikin is just another corrupt general who jumped to air force from being a land general his whole career and most of his glory is showing comrade President clips of aviation levelling Syrian cities in total air superiority.
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Jun 28, 2023 20:41
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fatherboxx posted:Wouldn't count the winter missile strikes campaign as a sign of some strategic competence. I thought people thought Surovikin was competent because he was also in charge during the Kherson withdrawal which seemed fairly orderly.
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Jun 28, 2023 20:43
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i wonder what the average russian thinks about the prigozhin quasirevolt
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Jun 28, 2023 20:48
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ChubbyChecker posted:i wonder what the average russian thinks about the prigozhin quasirevolt "I definitely do not publicly believe anything that may cause me to disappear if a stranger were to ask me about it"
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Jun 28, 2023 20:49
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Several other places are picking up the "Surovikin has been arrested" story but they're all still citing "two sources told the Moscow Times" so still take it with a grain of salt.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:11
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fatherboxx posted:Wouldn't count the winter missile strikes campaign as a sign of some strategic competence. I won't say the missile strike campaign was a stroke of genius, but it has put a lot of stress on Ukrainian air defenses and put them in the tough position of having to defend their cities or their troops. If it had or does deplete Ukraine's stock of air defense ammunition and the VKS can get air superiority, it could be a real game changer. He may not be their best general but he certainly is more competent than Gerasimov. Surovikin being in jail is definitely a good thing for Ukraine.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:12
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Nenonen posted:Look he got Lukashenko's word, would Putin ever break that? I asked a coworker born in Ukraine (who lives in North America now) and she said people she knows in Moscow were joking that, in case of war with NATO, "we'll just dig trenches and call Lukashenko for help."
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Jun 28, 2023 21:14
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Scratch Monkey posted:General Armageddonsent-to-the-gulag General Armageddontdefenestratemebro
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Jun 28, 2023 21:19
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The fairly orderly withdrawal from Kherson, acknowledging that Russian forces were in no condition to go back on the offensive, working to rehab/reconstitute Russian forces, and pursuing a more advantageous defensive strategy is what I was referencing. Compare to Gerasimov yolo-ing an army in terrible shape into prepared Ukrainian defenses. Yeah, agree with this part especially. In a weird way I feel like Ukraine being on the offensive is kind of a negative for them. Land won't win the war, even all the land including Crimea. Only the breakdown of the Russian army beyond capacity for further combat will end this, and the Russians putting back in charge some nutball who will listen to the war bloggers and attack on every front has a nonzero chance to bring back the massive death convoys and assaults on prepared defenses that were probably Ukraine's best ratio of damage dealt/received.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:33
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It's also possible that the sources are misleading and Surovikin was only taken to interrogation because of the western leaks and he'll be walking free a couple of hours later. Regardless of if he was part of a conspiracy or if he's going to suffer, it's a great play by US intelligence agencies!
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Jun 28, 2023 21:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Arresting your most competent general is a fine Russian tradition. Also killing them and sometimes their entirely family in the case of Svechin and Tukhachevsky.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:52
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Akratic Method posted:Yeah, agree with this part especially. In a weird way I feel like Ukraine being on the offensive is kind of a negative for them. Land won't win the war, even all the land including Crimea. If Russia loses Crimea Putin is done. So it does matter.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:05
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Mr. Apollo posted:It looks like Russia is apply camouflage to its naval vessels in the Black Sea in a response to naval drone attacks. Am I misunderstanding this or did it take the Russian Navy more than year to go "oh right, camouflage exists?"
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Jun 28, 2023 22:17
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EasilyConfused posted:Am I misunderstanding this or did it take the Russian Navy more than year to go "oh right, camouflage exists?" If it is satellite camouflage designed to gently caress with AI it would be pretty novel.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:26
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Also I'm kinda mad at the Russian Navy for their class name/ship name convention, "Admiral Who Cares-class destroyer Admiral So-and-so" is objectively terrible. The Air Force designating their planes depending on which company made them is much better; if we did it the F-15 could be a "McDoug-15" or the F-35 is instead the "LockMan-35" The Russian Army has the right idea of designating equipment based on year of design. An M-1 should be an M-79 Abrams.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:28
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Moon Slayer posted:Also I'm kinda mad at the Russian Navy for their class name/ship name convention, "Admiral Who Cares-class destroyer Admiral So-and-so" is objectively terrible. Eh it’s not any worse than Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth or Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford E: Seems to just be a Thing that they do  . The only weird thing imo is the UK using a living person’s name (well, living at the time) instead of someone dead and historical.E2: On closer reading the Queen Elizabeth class/vessel was named after a much earlier Queen Elizabeth. Still sounds weird though since it’s easily confused for with the Queen Elizabeth that was still alive at the time they were named. EITHER WAY there is also a second UK aircraft carrier named the HMS Prince of Wales and well that dude is also still very much alive. Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 22:32
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The U.S. Navy does the same thing.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:33
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Akratic Method posted:Yeah, agree with this part especially. In a weird way I feel like Ukraine being on the offensive is kind of a negative for them. Land won't win the war, even all the land including Crimea. Only the breakdown of the Russian army beyond capacity for further combat will end this, and the Russians putting back in charge some nutball who will listen to the war bloggers and attack on every front has a nonzero chance to bring back the massive death convoys and assaults on prepared defenses that were probably Ukraine's best ratio of damage dealt/received. "Breaking down the Russian army beyond capacity for further combat" is not a reasonable plan, and even if it was it's definitely not going to happen if Ukraine stays on the defensive. Entire armies collapsing like that is pretty rare in history and the main examples we're aware of happened in the world wars and took years of constant pressure by the most advanced armies and economies of the world to push them to total breakdown, plus in the case of Germany in WW1 a total starvation blockade. Asking to completely disable what is still one of the world's largest armies is kind of a gigantic ask of a mid-size European nation - it's much more reasonable to, say, retake territories you claim as your own and use them as a basis for negotiations that end the war since there's no further point in fighting. Even if they refuse to stop fighting, well hey, you've gotten your territory back and the Russians aren't running amok amongst your civilians anymore and you can now stay on the defensive and wait for them to come to you, as they must if they want to claim any kind of victory. Notable too that in no case was the collapse of the army accomplished without constant and serious offensives - simply put, if you remain on the defensive forever, the enemy can just...choose when to attack, and when to rest, and will never allow itself to run to its breaking point. If you want them to break, you need to push them when they don't want to and can't take any more, and that means going on the offensive. Ideally a best-case scenario would be Russia exhausting itself in a futile offensive and then, just when they're calling it off and pulling back to lick their wounds, striking out with reserves in a counter-offensive that shatters their already weakened and tired units before they have time to recover from their ordeal. But either way, you're not going to win the war if you aren't willing to attack now and then.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:35
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Moon Slayer posted:Also I'm kinda mad at the Russian Navy for their class name/ship name convention, "Admiral Who Cares-class destroyer Admiral So-and-so" is objectively terrible. The historical Russian destroyer names were quite good ---- various adjectives (same as Britain... except for the quality and the quantity of the ships themselves, of course... Edit: and on second thought, the British names I was thinking of ere mostly Battlecruisers.). OddObserver fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 22:36
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Moon Slayer posted:Also I'm kinda mad at the Russian Navy for their class name/ship name convention, "Admiral Who Cares-class destroyer Admiral So-and-so" is objectively terrible. That's just how ship classes work in almost all cases. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are the various lettered early-mid 20th century British destroyer classes.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:38
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Chalks posted:If it is satellite camouflage designed to gently caress with AI it would be pretty novel. Select all pictures of warships currently on fire [I am not a robot]
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Jun 28, 2023 22:42
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I'm more objecting to the repeated use of the word Admiral. At least the Nimitz class wasn't the "Admiral Chester Nimitz class" and ships named after naval personnel of note don't shoehorn in their rank. It's the USS Jack Lucas, not the USS Captain Jack Lucas. And I'm also mad that US carrier names don't commit to the bit. The Gerald Ford class should all be named after presidents, just like the Nimitz class should have all been named after famous admirals, damnit! Yes this is extremely dumb and pedantic. e; the two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers should have been named the HMS Queen Elizabeth I and HMS Queen Elizabeth II just to make things real confusing. Moon Slayer fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 22:45
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Moon Slayer posted:I'm more objecting to the repeated use of the word Admiral. At least the Nimitz class wasn't the "Admiral Chester Nimitz class" and ships named after naval personnel of note don't shoehorn in their rank. It's the USS Jack Lucas, not the USS Captain Jack Lucas. Ah, in that case I agree completely. Make it so the Royal Navy can only build as many ships of one class as monarchs of the same name. So the weird one-off survey ship can be the HMS Queen Anne and a class of destroyers gets to be HMS King Edward I-VIII
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Jun 28, 2023 22:58
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Please stop the ship derail unless they are in Black Sea right now...
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Jun 28, 2023 23:11
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Boris Galerkin posted:Eh it’s not any worse than Were you just surprised that there had been another Queen Elizabeth before Elizabath II.
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Jun 28, 2023 23:28
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Moon Slayer posted:The Air Force designating their planes depending on which company made them is much better; if we did it the F-15 could be a "McDoug-15" or the F-35 is instead the "LockMan-35" This is comically backwards. Who cares if the plane was made by Sukhoi or Mikoyan-Gurevich? What does that actually tell you? Nothing. A Mi-2 is a tiny little chopper, the Mi-24 is a giant-rear end Hind. A MiG-27 is a variable geometry ground attack plane, the Mig-29 is a twin-engine air superiority fighter. Meanwhile, an F-15 is a fighter. A UH-1 is a utility helicopter. An AH-64 is an attack helicopter. C-130? Cargo. EA-6B? Electronic warfare derived from an attack plane. Sure, the numbers are pretty much random, but the prefixes are always there to tell you what you're dealing with. It's the other way with ground stuff, obviously. The fact that there's an M1 rifle, M1 carbine, M1 helmet, M1 MBT, and probably some more M1s, should be proof positive that the entire system is stupid and ought to be discarded. Why is an M4 a replacement for M-16? Why is M60 both a machine gun and a tank, both developed roughly around the same period? And why do the numbers go well into quadruple digits, but literal hundreds have been skipped? Meanwhile, the Russians have it much simpler here. T is a tank, and those get the year of introduction at the end. BMP stands for Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty, which means "Infantry Fighting Vehicle," and unsurprisingly, all of them are IFVs. AK? Avtomat Kalashnikova. SVD? Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova. And so on, and so forth. It gets weird with artillery pieces, since those are frequently referred to primarily with their GRAU designation (e.g. 2K11), which is also logical, but kind of esoteric in that the first number designates the broad type of equipment (2 - artillery), the letter designates the specific branch (K - air defence), and the second number (11 - "Krug") identifies the specific system. Some of them also have army designations that sometimes are more prevalent, or actual names that may or may not fit a theme (Akatsiya and Gvozdika both being self-propelled guns named after flowers, Krug, Kub, Romb, and Tor all being SAM systems named after geometric shapes, and so on). But it's a lot messier than the general army designations used for most stuff (e.g. there are several numbers assigned to rocketry and it seems kind of random what gets assigned where, the Krug is 2K11, but Tor is 9K333; the MANPADS Igla is 9K38, but 9K37 is a Buk SAM; the Metis ATGM is 9K115, but Kornet ATGM is 9M133). So yeah. That's my objectively correct opinion.
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Jun 28, 2023 23:49
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Boris Galerkin posted:Eh it’s not any worse than The QE class is a huge *wink wink* situation where convention wouldn't allow it named after a living monarch but everyone knows it was after the reigning monarch. And Prince of Wales is named after the position, not the person.
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Jun 28, 2023 23:54
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Volmarias posted:Haven't they actually burned through most of their stockpiles already, though? Leading to bizarre circumstances like buying artillery shells they sold to North Korea back, units only being able to do one or two fire missions per day, pulling ancient equipment out not to replace losses, but because they can fire some other kind of shell that is still stocked that newer artillery can't fire, etc? Russia has been running out of shells since May of 2022, yet they still keep raining down. Artillery shells aren't hard to make, especially if you arent trying to stuff a GPS unit inside because your military is wholly owned by corporations trying to jack up the cost without regard for effectiveness. As for why Russia would be buying more from abroad, its because more shells is better than less shells. Industry is still ramping up and the heady days of 60k shells/day being dumped on the Ukrainian army likely won't be seen again for some time, but in the meantime they'll take any extras they can get.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:13
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Tevery Best posted:Why is an M4 a replacement for M-16? US Army Nomenclature System posted:The numerical type designators are not "globally" unique, but only within a certain category of equipment, like tanks, armoured vehicles, guns, etc. Therefore, the full designation for an item designated within this system must always include an item name. Carbine, Caliber .30, M1 Carbine, Caliber .30, M2 (M1 variant) Carbine, Caliber .30, M3 (M1 variant) Carbine, Caliber 5.56 mm, M4 Rifle, Caliber 7.62 mm, M14 Rifle, Caliber 7.62 mm, M15 (M14 variant) Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16
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Jun 29, 2023 00:19
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Chalks posted:If it is satellite camouflage designed to gently caress with AI it would be pretty novel. This assumes satellites only work in the visual range (they do not).
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Jun 29, 2023 00:24
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Nix Panicus posted:Russia has been running out of shells since May of 2022, yet they still keep raining down. Artillery shells aren't hard to make, especially if you arent trying to stuff a GPS unit inside because your military is wholly owned by corporations trying to jack up the cost without regard for effectiveness. As for why Russia would be buying more from abroad, its because more shells is better than less shells. Industry is still ramping up and the heady days of 60k shells/day being dumped on the Ukrainian army likely won't be seen again for some time, but in the meantime they'll take any extras they can get. They've been scaling back the number of artillery fires steadily since last fall and have had chronic shell shortages because they ate up decades of Soviet and Russian shell stockpiles on top of new production in less than a year. This would not have happened if new production was even remotely near expenditures. Stuffing a GPS unit and fins into a shell means a single shell accomplishes what would require substantially more dumb shells to accomplish. Also with greater reliability, particularly against hardened targets, and with less danger to the battery using them due to less time spent stationary and substantially longer effective range for any given platform because a guided shell can compensate for the forces acting on the shell throughout flight. You might as well be railing against SAMs being a thing because lol a 57mm shell is cheaper than an igla. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 00:35
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fatherboxx posted:Please stop the ship derail unless they are in Black Sea right now... Aha! So you admit that you want any evidence of the Nord Stream sabotage withheld from the thread. Mods knew! https://theintercept.com/2023/06/28/nord-stream-pipeline-bomb-investigation/ A heart-warming story of a MAGA Swede who sets out to prove Hersh right, only to lend more credence to the Andromeda theory instead.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:40
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I love the P38, it was a real can opener.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:45
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Warbadger posted:They've been scaling back the number of artillery fires steadily since last fall and have had chronic shell shortages because they ate up decades of Soviet and Russian shell stockpiles on top of new production in less than a year. This would not have happened if new production was even remotely near expenditures. The GPS breaks due to the force of firing. The shell is more expensive than just saturating the area with conventional shells. The shell has less explosives because it has to carry a GPS. The artillery platform has to have a bunch of dumb bullshit attached to it for positioning, increasing weight, power consumption, and necessitating maintenance. Jamming exists. Precision munitions are a grift for the stupid.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:46
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Nix Panicus posted:The GPS breaks due to the force of firing. The shell is more expensive than just saturating the area with conventional shells. The shell has less explosives because it has to carry a GPS. The artillery platform has to have a bunch of dumb bullshit attached to it for positioning, increasing weight, power consumption, and necessitating maintenance. Jamming exists. Precision munitions are a grift for the stupid. All this is worth it when you have to haul around a fraction of the shells and launchers to get the same damage on target as dumb shells.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:50
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