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Kchama posted:Kofman is a more recognizably wise person, but I've never had much faith in Rob Lee. It stems from when the 2022 invasion happened and he was on a podcast where they talked endlessly that it was impossible for Russia to invade, they were just bluffing for Rational Russian Reasons, and besides Russia would win in a few days anyways. Huh. I'm fairly sure Rob Lee was firmly in the "this is not a bluff" camp before the invasion. If you can't remember the name of the podcast, are you really sure they interviewed the same Rob Lee? But I can't tell from either your or Cugel's response if you listened to this podcast. Alperovich descripes some 50-60 ambulances arriving at the train station to receive the casualties from the daily train from the frontlines, and that was on a good day. He definitely sounded shaken and less certain of a Ukrainian victory than in previous podcasts, or maybe he was just reflecting the current mood in Kyiv.
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Jul 15, 2023 03:02
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How long has it been since Russia last made threats regarding their nuclear arsenal? For a while there it got so routine that people just stopped caring. Oh wait, maybe I answered my own question. What'd be interesting is if Putin gets drunk on his own farts and launches a bunch of ICBMs to the US & Friends, and none of them actually go off, because all of the plutonium in them was sold by the SRF generals to Iran & North Korea. Meanwhile, we retaliate at the same time and Russia turns into Fallout 5.
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Jul 15, 2023 03:58
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I'd be curious how much of our creaky nuke infrastructure would deliver during ClancyTime. I'm sure it's a far higher percentage than Russia's, but I'm guessing it's a good bit lower than what the Pentagon thinks it is.
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Jul 15, 2023 04:42
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GD_American posted:I'd be curious how much of our creaky nuke infrastructure would deliver during ClancyTime. I'm sure it's a far higher percentage than Russia's, but I'm guessing it's a good bit lower than what the Pentagon thinks it is. Even if every atom of NATO soil were vaporized without warning & no planes were airborne, aren’t there enough sub based nukes to still wipe out Russia several times over?
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Jul 15, 2023 04:53
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Even if every atom of NATO soil were vaporized without warning & no planes were airborne, aren’t there enough sub based nukes to still wipe out Russia several times over? uh hm Also, weren't those "boomer bastions" kind of dependent on thick Arctic sea ice?
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Jul 15, 2023 05:17
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Cugel the Clever posted:Definitely dumb that they took it down, but variations of that really were the broad consensus at the time. It didn't make sense that Russia would invade (no one understood the degree to which Putin had separated himself from reality and it seemed likely that he could achieve some extent of destabilization of the Ukrainian government and economy just by posturing) and, though folks were aware of the systemic corruption that kept Russia from living up to its strongman image, there was little understanding that it had left the Russian military so hobbled. Oh yeah, it's the 'taking it down' and trying to pretend nobody said it that made me lose faith. Though a lot of people who knew what they were talking about (the US security agencies, surprisingly for one, and Kofman himself) were arguing that the invasion was real and imminent, being wrong on it isn't necessarily an excuse for ignoring. I just feel like you should own up to your mistakes, even fleeting ones. Hannibal Rex posted:Huh. I'm fairly sure Rob Lee was firmly in the "this is not a bluff" camp before the invasion. If you can't remember the name of the podcast, are you really sure they interviewed the same Rob Lee? I didn't listen to the podcast you were talking about, I was just posting my loss of faith in Rob Lee since he couldn't even own up to him being wrong. I even pointed out that he wrote stuff saying that the preparations probably weren't a bluff (in that they were intended to get Ukraine to surrender rather than face a possible invasion). It seems like he didn't think they'd actually go through with it, but they were serious about their posturing. It's hard to find the podcast he went on because they literally took it down the next day. IIRC, they replaced it with an article about the invasion. I know it was the same Rob Lee though, unless there's two that work at FPRI. They kind of bragged hard about it being The FPRI Rob Lee. I listened to it because I was curious at the time since people were praising him highly in the run-up. So when the invasion happened and I went back to that page to link to it to make fun of him in the invasion thread, it was gone. Kchama fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 05:26
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I'm seeing some interesting leaks from social media on both sides of the war. Today a Russian unit on the Bakhmut front released a video pleading for for ammunition and arms, claiming they have a "pocketful" of rounds and 2 working rifles for 22 men. On the UKR side, multiple videos of forced conscription have been making the rounds. I've seen plenty from Russia, but bone from UKR before today. The the video showed police ND military personnel acting together to forcibly detain and take military age males.
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Jul 15, 2023 06:05
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Nessus posted:They would surely be hunted in their bastions by absolutely, american rockets are famous for their interactions with large chunks of ice.
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Jul 15, 2023 06:17
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shame on an IGA posted:absolutely, american rockets are famous for their interactions with large chunks of ice. Oof
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Jul 15, 2023 06:19
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shame on an IGA posted:absolutely, american rockets are famous for their interactions with large chunks of ice. Too soon
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Jul 15, 2023 06:22
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bulletsponge13 posted:I'm seeing some interesting leaks from social media on both sides of the war. Today a Russian unit on the Bakhmut front released a video pleading for for ammunition and arms, claiming they have a "pocketful" of rounds and 2 working rifles for 22 men. There's been accusations and videos before from the UKR side, but IIRC it has come out that a lot of those are criminals using impersonation to perform actual kidnapping under the guise of conscription. Which is pretty hosed up, too.
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Jul 15, 2023 06:25
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Nessus posted:They would surely be hunted in their bastions by Arctic bastions for SSBNs were a Soviet tactic, anyway.
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Jul 15, 2023 07:48
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Kchama posted:There's been accusations and videos before from the UKR side, but IIRC it has come out that a lot of those are criminals using impersonation to perform actual kidnapping under the guise of conscription. Which is pretty hosed up, too. Yeah, the last time there was a round of these rumours, they turned out to be lies from the usual suspects. Take these with a bucketful of salt. I'm also personally less prone to listening to Ukraine-defeatism considering that every big voice on the Russian side is whimpering that they're getting their asses beat and things aren't going well, it's pretty much a unified choir.
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Jul 15, 2023 10:15
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idk about defeatism, I think it's still too soon to say how the offensive will turn out, but there's been a pretty broad consensus from both Russian and Ukrainian sources that fighting has been extremely intense and both sides are taking significant losses. Russian side seemed a lot more confident before the Vilnius summit and the DPICM news and since then quite a few more cracks have been appearing in Russian defenses (particularly around the flanks of Bakhmut and on the left bank of the Dniepr near the Antonovsky bridge where Russia has so far failed to dislodge Ukraine's bridgehead.
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Jul 15, 2023 10:56
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Kchama posted:It's hard to find the podcast he went on because they literally took it down the next day. IIRC, they replaced it with an article about the invasion. I know it was the same Rob Lee though, unless there's two that work at FPRI. They kind of bragged hard about it being The FPRI Rob Lee. I listened to it because I was curious at the time since people were praising him highly in the run-up. So when the invasion happened and I went back to that page to link to it to make fun of him in the invasion thread, it was gone. The podcast you are thinking of was at Nintendo, I know because my uncle who works there still has the tape. I think you might be misremembering because he's right here in writing in January 22 saying 'this is a compellance campaign with a very real risk of escalation to full invasion if Putin decides' https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/ e: I think the key thing is expectation management. 18 months ago it would have been a hard prediction that at this point Russia would have completely expended its offensive strength and struggling to hold back a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 10:59
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Kchama posted:There's been accusations and videos before from the UKR side, but IIRC it has come out that a lot of those are criminals using impersonation to perform actual kidnapping under the guise of conscription. Which is pretty hosed up, too. Uhh no, the conscription scandals in Odessa were legit, they had a really terrible draft office prone to public outbursts.
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Jul 15, 2023 11:35
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fatherboxx posted:Uhh no, the conscription scandals in Odessa were legit, they had a really terrible draft office prone to public outbursts. I didn't say they were false at all. Just that there was also a lot of criminals taking advantage of it for their own schemes. It was someone else who tried to say that they were false. Alchenar posted:The podcast you are thinking of was at Nintendo, I know because my uncle who works there still has the tape. I think you might be misremembering because he's right here in writing in January 22 saying 'this is a compellance campaign with a very real risk of escalation to full invasion if Putin decides' https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/ I actually pointed out that very January 22nd writing! That's why I speculated he got caught up in what his hosts were saying and went along with it. Thanks for calling me a liar, though. EDIT: I actually made a post about this a year ago in fact. Kchama posted:As a funny note, at the start of the war I was looking up Rob Lee to see who he was and he had been on a pod cast on the day before the war broke out and the pod cast had a certain... apparent ideological stance on the possibility of war, because their description of the episode including the phrase "insane idea that Russia would invade". They quickly changed it the next day but Kchama fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 13:04
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Cugel the Clever posted:Kauffman's taken that tone since the earliest hypothetical talk of Ukraine's counteroffensive. Perun's similarly downplayed getting too hyped about rapid outcomes given the various countervailing forces. I believe it was Perun who also noted that pro-Ukraine folks credulously amplifying Russian social media claims of disastrous Russian defeats might be getting manipulated: while it's fun in the short-term, it leads to longer-term greater doubts if all these breathless takes of defeats don't manifest in tangible gains on the front lines. A more grounded approach might better sustain support and supply over the long-term, but it's hard to tell cheerleaders to tone it down a notch when folks are dealing with the trauma of such heinous, unprovoked aggression. Over time i have stopped watching all the daily update vids on the war, you just can't see the overall picture and get caught up in cheering on gains here & there that are just the flow of combat. I prefer Perun and Anders Puck Nielsen nowadays along with the UK Defence briefings.
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Jul 15, 2023 15:38
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Kchama posted:Oh yeah, it's the 'taking it down' and trying to pretend nobody said it that made me lose faith. Though a lot of people who knew what they were talking about (the US security agencies, surprisingly for one, and Kofman himself) were arguing that the invasion was real and imminent, being wrong on it isn't necessarily an excuse for ignoring. I just feel like you should own up to your mistakes, even fleeting ones. On topic of bad podcast predictions, Radio War Nerd made it quite clear Russia had zero chance of invading and to think otherwise was ludicrous. I had been enjoying episodes on topics I didn’t know much about but had concerns about some stuff they had said on topics I did know about, so that was enough for me to unsubscribe as I lost faith in their expertise.
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Jul 15, 2023 20:29
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I prefer people who had their asses atleast keep it up with the next episode immediately going into the ways they were wrong instead of just hiding.
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Jul 15, 2023 20:31
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Hyrax Attack! posted:On topic of bad podcast predictions, Radio War Nerd made it quite clear Russia had zero chance of invading and to think otherwise was ludicrous. I had been enjoying episodes on topics I didn’t know much about but had concerns about some stuff they had said on topics I did know about, so that was enough for me to unsubscribe as I lost faith in their expertise.
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Jul 15, 2023 20:35
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I remember waking up at 6AM, checking my phone, and seeing the all-caps, bolded headline "RUSSIA LAUNCHES FULL SCALE INVASION OF UKRAINE." I didn't get a single work email the entire day because everyone was glued to the TV. e: In retrospect, Western Europe had its head in the sand. EUCOM had surged personnel in the 3 weeks prior to the invasion and was running 24 hour ops in the days leading up to it. Apparently Patch had no parking until they mobilized 18th Airborne Corps up in Wiesbaden. Meanwhile Macron and Scholz were promising peace in our time. psydude fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 20:54
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Re:radio war nerd's wrong prediction, you really have to respect how thoroughly they owned their error afterwards. Lots of people never ever do. IIRC Mark was like "there's no way they will invade it would be so monumentally stupid and makes no sense". Which I guess was true in retrospect.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:03
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My experience with War Radio Nerd was that he showed up on an episode of Chapo when I listened to that podcast, just so he could repeat the Van Riper story as fact. Later, I gave the show a shot until the Ukraine invasion happened, when he kept consistently predicting wrong things, followed by an episode where he basically defended the massacre at Bucha (He said something along the lines of "You have to feel for the poor Russian soldiers who were getting drone striked") and ended the show with a "Stop making new planes, just make the A-10" appeal. I gave up after that and tried again when he had a "tank expert" on just for that "expert" to claim that submerged welding was welding that happened underwater. Is it just that the WRN is kind of too biased by his politics, or is he just not really as much a warfare expert as he is a historian or something? Or did I get the wrong idea?
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Jul 15, 2023 22:00
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:My experience with War Radio Nerd was that he showed up on an episode of Chapo when I listened to that podcast, just so he could repeat the Van Riper story as fact. Later, I gave the show a shot until the Ukraine invasion happened, when he kept consistently predicting wrong things, followed by an episode where he basically defended the massacre at Bucha (He said something along the lines of "You have to feel for the poor Russian soldiers who were getting drone striked") and ended the show with a "Stop making new planes, just make the A-10" appeal. I gave up after that and tried again when he had a "tank expert" on just for that "expert" to claim that submerged welding was welding that happened underwater. Man, if he was justifying Bucha, he can rightly get hosed. "Man, they are so made about drones the executed civilians" Get hosed man.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:13
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psydude posted:I remember waking up at 6AM, checking my phone, and seeing the all-caps, bolded headline "RUSSIA LAUNCHES FULL SCALE INVASION OF UKRAINE." I didn't get a single work email the entire day because everyone was glued to the TV. I had been saying it to friends based on the poo poo that was out in the news for like a week or 2 before hand, especially the US warnings about the coming invasion that it was coming. Didn't know the date but I was certain that we'd hit the point where the US had basically challenged Putin to go home, demobilize your troops, and prove us wrong. He decided to invade anyway despite being called out directly by Biden. Was interesting hearing them all say "I was wrong and you were right, he really is that stupid" I was quite wrong in thinking the Ukrainians could not hold off the Russians, my personal guess was less than 72h to Kyiv and the government would crumble, but I think nobody expected the RuMil to be as hollowed out as it is. The only thing it has going for it is sheer weight of numbers. orange juche fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 22:19
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I also think people don't give Ukraine enough credit. I listen to a podcast hosted by a US Army urban warfare expert, and they did an episode on the Defense of Kyiv: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-2022-battle-of-kyiv-a-lecture/ He mentioned that Ukraine mobilized incredibly quickly, blowing up tons of bridges to funnel the Russians down a handful of lanes. Operators of the Dniper Dam were in constant contact with the military, raising and lowering water levels as needed. Officers were able to round up army stragglers and stage defensive operations while also enlisting civilians' help to build fortifications. It really shows ingenuity and leadership, which is undersold when people just sum up the whole operation as "lol Russia did a dumb" (which isn't untrue, just not the whole story).
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Jul 15, 2023 22:29
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:My experience with War Radio Nerd was that he showed up on an episode of Chapo when I listened to that podcast, just so he could repeat the Van Riper story as fact. Later, I gave the show a shot until the Ukraine invasion happened, when he kept consistently predicting wrong things, followed by an episode where he basically defended the massacre at Bucha (He said something along the lines of "You have to feel for the poor Russian soldiers who were getting drone striked") and ended the show with a "Stop making new planes, just make the A-10" appeal. I gave up after that and tried again when he had a "tank expert" on just for that "expert" to claim that submerged welding was welding that happened underwater. Rob Lee had an embarrassing time on a podcast. WRN revealed himself to be constantly wrong shithead. I guess that does put it into perspective.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:40
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Hyrax Attack! posted:On topic of bad podcast predictions, Radio War Nerd made it quite clear Russia had zero chance of invading and to think otherwise was ludicrous. I had been enjoying episodes on topics I didn’t know much about but had concerns about some stuff they had said on topics I did know about, so that was enough for me to unsubscribe as I lost faith in their expertise. So war experts getting it wrong is one thing; Russia "experts" are another ---- if they don't know that Russians widely view Ukrainians with racist condescension, and can't account for it in how they predict Russia will act, how much do they really know?
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Jul 15, 2023 22:44
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And lets see how long the sheer weight of numbers can hold out. I've seen reports that say that Russia only has so many able-bodied males nowadays compared to the world wars, so there's a limited supply.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:46
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OddObserver posted:So war experts getting it wrong is one thing; Russia "experts" are another ---- if they don't know that Russians widely view Ukrainians with racist condescension, and can't account for it in how they predict Russia will act, how much do they really know? There were two groups of people looking at the situation pre war and they each split into two groups: 1) Russia experts. There was a camp saying 'this is Russia coercive control, bluffing for concessions', but there was another camp saying quite loudly 'Post-COVID Putin is a very different guy to pre-COVID Putin, the inner circle on the Kremlin has gotten really small and they really believe this stuff'. 2) Mil experts. Both camps agreed that what Russia was doing looked like mobilisation for an invasion, but camp A said "without general mobilisation Russia doesn't have the combat power to occupy Ukraine, this would be a disaster" and camp B said "yes it would be a disaster but what they're doing doesn't make sense unless it's what they're going for".
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Jul 15, 2023 22:56
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Jimmy Smuts posted:And lets see how long the sheer weight of numbers can hold out. I've seen reports that say that Russia only has so many able-bodied males nowadays compared to the world wars, so there's a limited supply. Equipment wise they do have a lot of it, more than Ukraine has, it just has to be "refurbished" mostly. They're also far less likely to run out of troops before Ukraine, but their lines have got to be brittle as glass right now due to poor troop rotation and local manpower deficiencies. They've got really good defense in depth going on from months of sitting still, but if the Ukrainians can bust past it, they could likely pull crazy thunder runs until they hit a geographical obstacle demarcating the new front line.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:59
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It seems like they have a shitload of minefields and enough guys to make these minefields something the Ukrainians can't just clean up as if they were behind the lines. I would not be shocked if one of the purposes of the cluster bombs are to do minefield clearing along with blowing up positions, but I may fundamentally misunderstand the weapon system.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:10
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Nessus posted:It seems like they have a shitload of minefields and enough guys to make these minefields something the Ukrainians can't just clean up as if they were behind the lines. I would not be shocked if one of the purposes of the cluster bombs are to do minefield clearing along with blowing up positions, but I may fundamentally misunderstand the weapon system. I've seen videos of Ukraine playing with some drone-based mine removal which might change the calculus a bit if they can get it happening in sufficient volume. If you can toss drones out there to clear a path without risking your troops, it becomes a lot easier to advance.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:17
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Nessus posted:It seems like they have a shitload of minefields and enough guys to make these minefields something the Ukrainians can't just clean up as if they were behind the lines. I would not be shocked if one of the purposes of the cluster bombs are to do minefield clearing along with blowing up positions, but I may fundamentally misunderstand the weapon system. Cluster munitions are not an effective mine clearing tool, as if a munition explodes more than a foot or so away from a mine, it won't set it off. Then there's the fact that whatever the percentage of UXO the cluster munition generates creates an unintentional mine hazard on its own. PurpleXVI posted:I've seen videos of Ukraine playing with some drone-based mine removal which might change the calculus a bit if they can get it happening in sufficient volume. If you can toss drones out there to clear a path without risking your troops, it becomes a lot easier to advance. The video you probably saw was of a grenade being dropped on a tightly packed row of anti-tank mines on a road. That's one of the very few use cases for using a grenade to clear mines. In most instances, you're just not going to see the mines from a drone, and you won't be accurate enough to detonate a mine with an air-dropped grenade.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:21
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Hm, fair. I thought I'd seen some kind of "giant explodey or series of explodey" thing used to clear out a minefield but this may well have been in a Fallout game or something. There doesn't seem to be a quick way that isn't either horribly destructive or horribly unethical. Ukraine might use a horribly destructive one to make a cut through a minefield... if they knew where there was one and perhaps more importantly where it ended. I suspect there isn't even some kind of master minefield document for the Russians, though.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:27
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Nessus posted:Hm, fair. I thought I'd seen some kind of "giant explodey or series of explodey" thing used to clear out a minefield but this may well have been in a Fallout game or something. There doesn't seem to be a quick way that isn't either horribly destructive or horribly unethical. Ukraine might use a horribly destructive one to make a cut through a minefield... if they knew where there was one and perhaps more importantly where it ended. You're thinking of mine clearing line charges. Which they've also used for trench clearing.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:30
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Nessus posted:Hm, fair. I thought I'd seen some kind of "giant explodey or series of explodey" thing used to clear out a minefield but this may well have been in a Fallout game or something. There doesn't seem to be a quick way that isn't either horribly destructive or horribly unethical. Ukraine might use a horribly destructive one to make a cut through a minefield... if they knew where there was one and perhaps more importantly where it ended. Explosive minefield clearing is something different, usually using purpose-built launchers that more or less hurl a rope of plastic explosives out ahead to blast a comparatively narrow path through the area ahead. Russia's used some of those offensively in the war, as I recall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine-clearing_line_charge
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Jul 15, 2023 23:31
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I'm not going to judge anyone for getting the call wrong on Russia invading before the fact. I will ruthlessly judge them on how well they handle being wrong.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:48
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MICLICs seem really cool and I wonder if NATO is providing Ukraine with minefield clearing equipment.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:50
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