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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Truga posted:^^^ lmfao at the reader context on MTG post to be fair - why aren’t more people asking why 85%+ of our artillery capability is cluster munitions that kill civilians at an extremely high rate. they shouldn’t be sent to Ukraine absolutely but it shouldn’t stop there. they should also all be destroyed so they can never be used
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Jul 15, 2023 21:09
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Frosted Flake posted:I appreciate you responding, but I almost feel like you missed the point of the text you murdered me in the first sentence of your post while remaining so polite, gg no re. I just wanted to make a long post that nobody would read, is it so much to ask for? (yes it is, I will attempt to post better) Frosted Flake posted:And that's without getting into all the loving games with who got control of priceless factories built at taxpayer expense for pennies, who these contracts were steered to and everything else - that's what should make you sick to your stomach, not the specific gas system of the SA80 - which had problems, but the problems were the result of way worse poo poo that is not only still happening but has only gotten worse since then. let there be no doubt I 100% agree that neoliberalism is not only an awful, warmongering system, it is also extremely bad at waging war which would be funny if it wasn't for all the death and destruction. January 6 Survivor has issued a correction as of 21:16 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 21:12
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VoicesCanBe posted:Correct. Liberals are fully starting to adopt the neocon view that any kind of negotiation automatically equals appeasement. Starting? the Neocons completely took over the Democratic Party during the Obama administration.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:13
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I think Oryx not securing funding from the US FY24 budget makes more sense.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:18
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it's a hard life trying to survive in the grifting ecosystem
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Jul 15, 2023 21:23
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BadOptics posted:I think Oryx not securing funding from the US FY24 budget makes more sense. I still wonder what Oryx lost the budget fight to. CIA? Some senator's buddy's personal project? Ukrainian Ministry of Defense?
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Jul 15, 2023 21:24
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https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1680014139903680512?s=20
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Jul 15, 2023 21:25
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Marenghi posted:https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/13/biden-military-reservists-europe-deployment-00106271 able archer 83 but with an even more senile president hell yeah
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Jul 15, 2023 21:33
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Danann posted:I still wonder what Oryx lost the budget fight to. CIA? Some senator's buddy's personal project? Ukrainian Ministry of Defense? maybe NATO really weren't aware that Oryx is obviously massaging the numbers?
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Jul 15, 2023 21:34
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For the record they've both publicly said they don't support sending cluster munitions, they just haven't tweeted about it. https://jayapal.house.gov/2023/07/07/house-progressives-on-biden-administrations-cluster-munitions-transfer-to-ukraine/ https://www.axios.com/2023/07/11/bipartisan-congress-ukraine-cluster-bombs AOC voted for MTG's amendment to strip cluster munitions from the military aid package: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4097677-almost-50-democrats-snub-biden-with-vote-against-cluster-bombs-for-ukraine/
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Jul 15, 2023 21:34
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quote:But that good news obscures some grim realities quote:Ukraine’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, expressed frustration that Ukraine is fighting without Western F-16 warplanes, which the United States only recently agreed to allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on, but which are not expected to be delivered for several months at least. That has left the Ukrainian troops vulnerable to the Russian helicopters and artillery. 1. Political pressure from NATO 2. Internal political pressure 3. Death Ride based on deteriorating military conditions 4. NATO advisors told them that it would be easy 5. Death Ride based on deteriorating non-military conditions. 6. Ukrainian MoD thought it would be easy (based on Kherson and Kharkiv) BearsBearsBears has issued a correction as of 22:05 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 21:36
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Majorian posted:For the record they've both publicly said they don't support sending cluster munitions, they just haven't tweeted about it.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:38
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ЗеРада posted:
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Jul 15, 2023 21:38
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Frosted Flake posted:I'll put this to the thread: is this because liberals believe beliefs (lol) must be self-contained and perfect or something? It's the same reason why liberals can say that religion is a big part of their life but at the same time don't believe in anything. They subscribe (like a YouTube channel) to a vague spirituality where religion and tradition dictates and provides in their life other than feeling good about consuming. It's as much of a cultural signifier as drinking light beer A vs light beer B. Liberal beliefs exist to justify the decisions they already made. Also that ORBIS tool you linked is really cool. Frosted Flake posted:Liberals say, but I suspect lol don't have a felt belief, that politics is collective decision making and intergroup conflict over the allocation of resources. Frosted Flake posted:and for reasons I don't have the word count to get into lol. This isn't even FF's final form! Imagine the power of FF postin on a full mechanical keyboard.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:41
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BearsBearsBears posted:Even the NYT has gotten in on the "Good news for Ukraine" bit what about internal political pressure, from azov types?
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Jul 15, 2023 21:41
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Lostconfused posted:(from t.me/ZeRada1/14793, via tgsa) i remember the americans telling the brits a firm 'no' to wallace's nato gen secretary candidacy
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Jul 15, 2023 21:54
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Lostconfused posted:(from t.me/ZeRada1/14793, via tgsa) lol that's some seriously wishful thinking, re: the hawks clearing out.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:03
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January 6 Survivor posted:
Quoting to read later - but wanted to let you know that I really appreciate fully unhinged grognard effortposting, it is always educative
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Jul 15, 2023 22:05
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OctaMurk posted:what about internal political pressure, from azov types? I've added it at number 2. I forgot I was talking about Zaluzhny and not Ukraine as a whole.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:07
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Кирилл Фёдоров / Война История Оружие posted:
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Jul 15, 2023 22:07
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Majorian posted:lol that's some seriously wishful thinking, re: the hawks clearing out. I dunno why Ukrainians would be wishing for it, but that ain't my problem.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:07
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Lostconfused posted:I dunno why Ukrainians would be wishing for it, but that ain't my problem. Oops lol, didn't see it was from a Ukrainian source. I'll amend: that person really does not need to worry about hawks being cleared out.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:10
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Ah sweet their Business Expectations have hit 50 (??????)
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Jul 15, 2023 22:15
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Lostconfused posted:(from t.me/warhistoryalconafter/111556, via tgsa) Its one of the hotter zones right now, ukraine really doesnt want the PR nightmare of having a bad breakthrough that puts Lyman under fire. But loling that they are sending troops there like convicts. They wouldn't be doing this unless something stupid already happened once or twice before already
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Jul 15, 2023 22:20
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https://twitter.com/notpotbol/status/1680276539752214528
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Jul 15, 2023 22:20
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https://twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1680323863761002496/photo/1 Kind of seems like the same ol dance is going to keep going on around Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces go forward, Ukrainian forces fall back. Russians capture a hill, Russians fall back. Seems largely pointless if you ask me.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:27
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January 6 Survivor posted:you murdered me in the first sentence of your post while remaining so polite, gg no re. No, no it was very good, but the goal of selling off or shuttering a half dozen important state capacities was not to produce a better rifle, and in fact could only result in a lemon. It's like how the US wanted to change to a slightly different calibre, and now after a $4.5B program (or is that just the contract cost?), the "next generation hybrid cased ammunition" costs, what? $4 a bullet? That's loving insanity, and however they dress it up and say it's this much more effective - look at the British example - "60 per cent of all engineering support provided to Britain’s armed forces came from outsourced agencies. Thus the trend was towards greater industry involvement at the expense of providing independent advice to both users and taxpayers. This is set to continue with the government’s ongoing attempt to introduce more privatisation to the MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support organisation." Is it possible that the firearms engineers the government needs to contract because they've eliminated that as a civil service position, might steer multibillion dollar contracts towards the same companies that also employ them? Is it possible that a procurement system where industry is allowed to design the requirements, testing and competition essentially lets them set their price? So, you're entirely right about moving from .303, to 7.62 to 5.56. Each of those evolutions, I would argue, reflected military needs, the tactical trends you discussed. The government required a small calibre black powder cartridge. Then, time passes and a shorter, rimless case is possible because the cartridge is designed for modern propellants from the start, while the bullet is tried and true and also common to allies, facilitating shared logistics. Finally, soldiers can carry more, lighter, ammo of a low calibre, and even in the infantry section the riflemen don't make up the bulk of the firepower, so they don't really need to reach out to crazy ranges. There were politics involved in all of those calibres being adopted, and the rifles that fired them, absolutely. However, the battle needs came first, and you explained, in great detail, how and why. What I'm trying to draw attention to, is that whatever the mechanical improvements or whatever, we know why the SA80 was hosed up. We know all of that has only intensified since then, and we can see that now the basic service rifle of the US Army has a loving bimetallic cartridge. Why? It doesn't matter if it allows for a higher chamber pressure and enhanced  stopping power lethality defeating Level III armour accuracy at 600m, because we have a century of experience with infantry firefights. We know that doesn't matter - and we're paying for it anyway - because arms procurement has been captured by private industry. They wrote a requirement and designed a competition to be just about as expensive as humanly possible. I mean, look at this poo poo: This is not unique to Sig though. Every single option was going to cost a loving fortune, and unless you believe in convergent evolution, the only reason can be that it was designed to be that way.  All of that to say, you did a good job talking about the rifle, but with the amount of money involved, it's not really about the rifle anyway. That's what's changed since the 1980's. That's why the British Army's new IFV, which they sunk insane amounts of money into, passed all the trials with the organizations that are now 60% private sector - in the literally-McKinsey-designed "Smart Procurement" process - but keeps failing user acceptance trials. It gives the loving crew brain injuries from vibration. That's not something that only shows up in the last stage of testing, you have to be comically inept to even get to the prototype if it's that badly flawed, and yet they were given huge sums of R&D money, were given initial production orders, were given bonuses. Engineers know how to test for vibration. AFV design, hell IFV design is not an emerging field. This design should have never progressed to where it is, but because BAE was allowed to consolidate the entire industry - there is literally no alternative - because they have captured Lords and MPs (who sit on their board), it must be Built in Britain  , just like the SA80, which also "coincidentally" could go to one firm as a result. Now, they have openly in the media said "What are you going to do? You need to keep our British boys safe! This mustn't wait a moment longer!" So, rather than the contract getting scrapped, they are getting paid more R&D funds to "correct" a design - and this is my point - could not have had its flaws go unnoticed and, imo, would have had them detected, altered, or the contract scrapped, had the government (at McKinsey's suggestion) not deliberately removed all of the institutions, soldiers and civil servants that would have done so. Procurement is now a process for paying contractors, that's the only reasonable explanation.The Bradley had problems - it was at the start of the process I'm describing, just like the SA80 - but these new programs are designed to have problems. Trust me, I have to talk to the General Dynamics, BAE and Colt Canada engineers and R&D guys about the new thing they want to sell me, and it always happens to be the most expensive thing I can imagine that's just feasible enough to do. Right now it's combustable case propellants (as opposed to silk bags). I have no doubt that when the liquid propellants, Electro-Thermal or Electro-Magnetic guns that have been theorized since the 70's become a little more viable - that is what they will try to sell us. I point this out because I appreciate your passion for small arms, and you obviously have a knowledge of the subject, but it's not just small arms now. It's everything. It's the F-35, it's the ships that rust out, it's the shells that somehow have $B development programs, it's the lightweight howitzer that has grown so heavy with the poo poo that's been added on that they want R&D funding and another competition to procure a new lightweight howitzer. It's taking decades to produce broken equipment of types that used to go from the drawing board to the field in 2 years or less. They always claim it's because they're on the cutting edge, but they are rigging the competitions for that to be the case - and as a result reap the appropriately princely R&D and unit costs. Conceptually, there is no reason a service rifle needs to be on the cutting edge of technology, and we have 100 years of combat experience to back that up. We know a MBT does not have to be on the cutting edge - the M4 wasn't - or an aircraft - the Spitfire, P-38, P-47 and P-51 were good, but they were not on the cutting edge of design. We know a howitzer absolutely doesn't - the artillery that won WW2 was based on French Artillery from 1915. The 25lbr just scaled up the 18pdr, admittedly on an innovative (but not cutting edge or expensive) carriage. The same is true all the way up and down the line. We confuse these designs being good with them being advanced - but that wasn't the case for any Allied equipment that crosses my mind. Most designs were iterative, most automotive and many aircraft designs used existing parts. Allied radars were sophisticated, the Merlin engine was a great engine, it was difficult to refine 150 octane gas, but the effectiveness did not come from being on the cutting edge of material or theoretical science. So, all of that to say, I get it, the development of rifles, that is interesting. But what's happening here is not "well high tech things are expensive" "sometimes on the cutting edge there are bugs that needs to be worked out" or any of that stuff - which has been the line since at least the F-111. It's that programs are designed to explode in cost and the easiest way to do that is to cram as much R&D costs in as possible. You can justify delays, bugs, user complaints, time and cost overruns, program cost and unit cost by telling the public (and politicians) "well it's complex (and therefore the best) and on the cutting edge (and therefore the bugs are proof it's the best)", and that's become self-sustaining since they cut out all of the soldiers and civil servants whose job it was to prevent... exactly that. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 22:42 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 22:30
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 The funny bit here is that, I'm not sure if this came up before, employees at british munition plants are referred to as craft workers. The shells really are artisinaly crafted.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:32
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Cao Ni Ma posted:Its one of the hotter zones right now, ukraine really doesnt want the PR nightmare of having a bad breakthrough that puts Lyman under fire. I mean it is one telegram post, but in general, it does seem that conscripts have seen lower morale in recent weeks and even if their job is to hold trenches, it isn't really going to work if they just abandon positions. It is why the number of volunteers dropping is perhaps a bigger issue because their the ones you need to conduct offensives or hold positions under fire. ----- As far as the frontline in Ukraine goes, in all honesty, it seems like even a lot of better equipped troops are just using modified AK-74s, it is a trustworthy weapon, and if you put some better sights on it, it is going to not really be any different than a much more modern rifle. That said, it really doesn't make anyone a ton of money so.... Ardennes has issued a correction as of 22:47 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 22:40
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I don't know if it was this thread or Doomsday Econ, but someone suggested just paying the ruling class a bribe not to extract profits at the cost of the continuing existence of the state. They'd make the same amount of money, and we'd have functioning military equipment delivered, on time, in quantity. Win-win.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:47
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Ardennes posted:It isn't that much on its own but Biden is also activating 450 IRI (fully demobilized) personnel, which is pretty weird/rare. Authorizing is not the same as mobilizing. The EO permits the services to utilize reserves and national guard in order to rotate with force elements in Europe. Up to 3,000 personnel. Up to 15% are legally authorized to be IRR. EUCOM amd the services have not uet determined how many of those 3,000 will be utilized or whether a single billet will be IRR. My guess: They use a lot of the authorization to pull from the reserve and guard components and activate zero IRR personnel. I bet its reserve units to backfill EUCOM missions as formations (like BNs and companies), not grabbing random reservists and IRR. E: corrected to say this allows EUCOM backfills which are not necessarily the same as NATO backfills. mlmp08 has issued a correction as of 22:52 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 22:50
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Third World Reagan posted:has ukraine gotten nato rations yet At the start of the war Steve1989 did a review of a 24 hour Ukrianian ration from like 2021 or something. Sent that video to my Ukrianian friend and he told me the tea included in that ration was from Russia
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Jul 15, 2023 22:52
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't know if it was this thread or Doomsday Econ, but someone suggested just paying the ruling class a bribe not to extract profits at the cost of the continuing existence of the state. They'd make the same amount of money, and we'd have functioning military equipment delivered, on time, in quantity. Win-win. That was a Mao quote, I think, so I guess they'd be weary about that.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:54
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't know if it was this thread or Doomsday Econ, but someone suggested just paying the ruling class a bribe not to extract profits at the cost of the continuing existence of the state. They'd make the same amount of money, and we'd have functioning military equipment delivered, on time, in quantity. Win-win. If they know the state is willing to bribe them, why not keep on asking for more until there is nothing left? Anyway, a lot of the purpose of these systems is about public perception, to impress but also keep a healthy about of fear in the public with actual battlefield application being secondary.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:54
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Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:Also that ORBIS tool you linked is really cool.  I occasionally try to think of ways I could incorporate it into work materials somehow because it's really cool and more people should know about it. If someone did the sailing routes, canoe routes, portages and Indian trails, I think it could be used in Canadian Military History, obviously American Military History too, modelling travel times, logistics, campaign seasons, why Fort Detroit was created, why the Fortress of Louisbourg was important and so on. I bet you could get that approved as a dissertation, actually, researching and then coding all of the elements, testing them against historical data and so on. Then more research out of using it in campaign studies, or any kind of research about travel, logistics, economic history, really. It's just that I don't have any training in Digital History (Digital Humanities?) or whatever that discipline is called, so no one is going to pay for me to go to learn about it at Stanford, then do ongoing research on it here. For the newly laid off computer touchers I know are ITT, this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to pursue, and I can think of several universities that would want to give a position to someone with that experience. If you have a HBSc, I can't imagine it would be hard to get into whatever graduate school at Stanford oversees it either. Just saying... 
Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 22:59 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 22:56
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't know if it was this thread or Doomsday Econ, but someone suggested just paying the ruling class a bribe not to extract profits at the cost of the continuing existence of the state. They'd make the same amount of money, and we'd have functioning military equipment delivered, on time, in quantity. Win-win. they'd probably take that as well as when people suggested paying the slave owners to free their slaves it's not just about the money, it's about being the special boy
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Jul 15, 2023 22:59
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BadOptics posted:I think Oryx not securing funding from the US FY24 budget makes more sense. There were enough open admissions in the past two weeks that CIA and State don't just continue Operation Mockingbird through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, (hence the near-colour revolution in Georgia over exposing that), but have been bankrolling this memefied online iteration of it too. I don't think you'd be out on a limb if you guessed that's what happened to Oryx. Incorporating Oryx's numbers into their own reports passed along to politicians and senior military officials would conform to that too, because it's a way of guiding the narrative (and policy options available) even within the US government. The CIA's dream is to be able to do that, which is why like half of the independent academics who are brought in to provide impartial advice and consultation to policymakers, which just happens to align with what the CIA wants, turn out to be CIA. They're always able to skirt having a secret employee brief people in the interests of their institutional prerogative, with pretend impartiality, by claiming that revealing their identity, even to senators and the Joint Chiefs is a security risk. Not saying the Deep State has that level of involvement with Oryx, but having the guy who writes the reports everyone else takes at face value work for you is obviously extremely useful for winning office arguments. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 23:08 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 23:03
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Gotta admit that naming an objectively worse system of procurement ''smart procurement'' is a stroke of genius. But yeah to a degree I'm just a dumb civvie who likes reading about guns and while I know that there's naturally going to be a degree of grift inherent in literally any military procurement program the reality of how badly prepared decades of neoliberalism left Nato didn't really hit me until about the war in Ukraine. It made sense that after the last two decades having been spent in low intensity conflict in the middle east/asia, western militaries would need to adapt to be ready for a war against a peer or near peer enemy, but here's the thing that worries me : they weren't even all that good at fighting a bunch of illiterate zealots with cobbled together khyber pass Aks, what are the odds this whole bloated system can actually pivot to being a competent industrial base and fighting force against an enemy that has a good industrial base of their own and a military eager to show its strength? And now for the part that makes me actually depressed : when those incompetent clowns realize they have dug themselves in a situation where the only alternative to seeing their whole worthless system collapse is one last roll of the nuclear dice hoping our poo poo woks better than theirs : not to sound like a party pooper but a few billion dead people and the loss of so much of mankind's creation and culture just so the failsons of failsons try to keep what they never earned is a very bleak thought.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:07
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Frosted Flake posted:There were enough open admissions in the past two weeks that CIA and State don't just continue Operation Mockingbird through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, (hence the near-colour revolution in Georgia over exposing that), but have been bankrolling this memefied online iteration of it too. I don't think you'd be out on a limb if you guessed that's what happened to Oryx. I guess the question is why they thought it had outlived its usefulness. Possibly because it's veracity started to look more suspect or NATO equipment started to be added to it? Maybe just a gradual pull back from Ukraine as a whole? I mean you can go a lot of ways on it. Admittedly, when you get the Ostrogoth Empire, arguably you can say they are still pulling legitimacy from Rome but nevertheless, the decline of the city itself must have been telling from a city of over a million to tens of thousands. Arguably, it was could have been seen as a legacy of a corrupt entity and its time had come, but the sheer optimism may also been simply that the seat of Ravenna had offered stability while the population of Italy itself had seen a severe decline for generations. January 6 Survivor posted:Gotta admit that naming an objectively worse system of procurement ''smart procurement'' is a stroke of genius. But yeah to a degree I'm just a dumb civvie who likes reading about guns and while I know that there's naturally going to be a degree of grift inherent in literally any military procurement program the reality of how badly prepared decades of neoliberalism left Nato didn't really hit me until about the war in Ukraine. I am less convinced over time that the US government and its owners would actually be willing to pull the trigger, they love to talk about it, but ultimately this entire system is about generating wealth and dominating others. It is hard to do that when you are a radioactive wasteland. While I am sure there is the hardcore crowd that would love to push the button, all of those oligarchs and financiers know that they are going to gain jack squat from a nuclear conflict. They built American society to extract wealth from, to have it indebted to them, how is it going to work if the entire system collapses? In the end, they don't really care about the Russians or Chinese deeply beyond that they are competitors (or perhaps future revenue streams), and while they do have something to lose from the shrinking of American fortunes, it makes more sense for them to pivot that to blow it all up. It is just the average American (like the average Briton) that will be in worsening misery as the bit of marrow is sucked from their bones. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:21 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 23:13
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Frosted Flake posted:If you have a HBSc, I can't imagine it would be hard to get into whatever graduate school at Stanford oversees it either. Just saying... Get a government grant to make an ORBIS model of North American canoe and porter paths, then later spin it off as the spiritual successor to Oregon trail. edit: Mount and Blade started off as a history project. Deadly Ham Sandwich has issued a correction as of 23:17 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 23:15
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