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fatherboxx)
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Just a note regarding AfD: certainly some parties in some European countries have found pro-Russia stance a losing card, but AfD has been rising pretty steadily in the polls for the last year or so, and is now polling as the second largest party behind CDU/CSU. Their message does work to a certain extent.
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Jul 27, 2023 21:25
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The Nazi party is primarily rising because the GOP-imported talking points of the conservatives ("woke", "are children", LGBT issues, etc. you know the drill) are better served by them. The conservatives may talk about Ukraininan refugees being welfare tourists, but the Nazis promise to actually do something about it and won't back down with a non-apology when called out. First time as a tragedy, second time as a farce, etc.
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Jul 27, 2023 22:15
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ethanol posted:because i hate myself, i recently read every ny times front page from 1930-1941, so something like 4000 pages. I did it to get an idea of a couple things: a real chronology of events leading up to ww2, differences between day reports and what we know actually happened (surprisingly they were very well informed though, even stuff like purges are pretty well reported within 24 hours), the number of mentions of stuff happening to jews (the nytimes was reporting deportations to concentration camps as far back as 33/34), and just a general sense of the public mood in the years leading up to the war. The fall of france is certainly an interesting time period, while you can certainly sense panic, but it was such an incredibly brief event, like a matter of days and it was over. And in that sense, without internet, the news paper only updating once in the morning, the daily reports were somewhat positive because of the success of the evacuation. And then suddenly a lot of reports about the battle of britain, which is mostly pretty positive because german losses racked up very quickly. I got a real feeling they were optimistic was that hitler would ask for a peace in his favor having walloped france's government, but of course, he invades russia instead within about a year... which he did a very bad job hiding plans for. everybody know he was going to do it seemingly by summer 41. This is a really interesting post, thank you for sharing your insight.
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Jul 27, 2023 22:46
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ethanol posted:because i hate myself, i recently read every ny times front page from 1930-1941, so something like 4000 pages To be honest this sounds like something I'd spend the weekend doing just for fun.
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Jul 27, 2023 22:57
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I'd a think that if you did that for long enough the better you would be able to spot when there was a coordinated restriction on pessimistic tone, or at what times there was no structured propagandistic restriction on news reporting. But I bet a lot of articles written at the time were required to have a certain level of "We're Not Owned"
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Jul 27, 2023 23:51
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Paranoea posted:Curious why you're making this point? I can see a road leading from Robotyne to Tokmak, so wouldn't bypassing the town put Ukraine on that road? Or would this leave their flanks too exposed or something similar? I am pointing to the two extremes of how you can view the development. The tweet shows the defenses on the western branch of the arrow in the picture below heading toward Verbove.  Clearly, part of the main line of defense whereas Robotyne seemed more like a fortified outpost but direction is pointed away from Tomak and getting past it just means you have to pivot in front of another fortification line without necessarily bypassing anything. I am not a military planner so I usually have no judgments on micro stuff like this either way other than trying to ensure I view it in the proper context. lilljonas posted:Also breaking through a line at any point could force the opponent to pull back troops along a lot of that line to defenses further back, as they'd be risking getting outflanked otherwise. Even if the breakthrough is not at an immediately important spot, any breakthrough can force the rest of the line to buckle. IIRC we saw this at least several times in the Kherson offensive. Yes, the Russians do have a habit of bugging out before a position becomes untenable or vulnerable to flanking attacks. Perhaps this is an effort to dislodge Russian forces from large parts of the buffer zone. Moon Slayer posted:And even if the Russians haven't been attrited to the point where they don't have enough reinforcements to rapidly shore up the defensive line, do they really have enough spare manpower to shore up two? Or three? Do the Ukrainians have the manpower to actually sustain 3 major attacks though? No one knows? The fact that the 2nd wave of troops is being sent in before what appears to be the scheduled objectives were met makes me think the manpower pressure is on the Ukrainian side at the moment ------ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66306150 Sensationalist headline but does reveal some more adaptations from the Russians. Double stacking mines to disable mine rollers and remote detonated mines/IEDs with Russian drones monitoring booby-trapped sites so they know when to set off the charge.
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Jul 27, 2023 23:57
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Staluigi posted:I'd a think that if you did that for long enough the better you would be able to spot when there was a coordinated restriction on pessimistic tone, or at what times there was no structured propagandistic restriction on news reporting. But I bet a lot of articles written at the time were required to have a certain level of "We're Not Owned" It's easy to spot. at least imo. coordinated restrictions were clear during reporting about the US sending arms or otherwise rocking the neutrality stance to the allies. The headline tone of the paper is overtly for neutrality (it's a US paper after all), much of that owing to the fact roosevelt is campaigning in two elections in that time period based on that nuetral stance, and whatever he says/does is major headline news. but many of the sub articles debate the topic of sending arms to the allies. what struck me was how hitler becoming chancellor, and the enabling act.. basically anything to do with hindeburg giving away power, was always front page news. Whereas many days there are no mentions of europe at all. But that was a big deal. The constitutional changes by nazi germany were printed on the front page, and they reviled it as the end of democracy in that country, long before he started taking whole countries. he was called a dictator the first time a day or within days after hindenburg died. for this reason there is never a anti-allies stance. the stuff in 39-41 about britian and france is pretty unrestricted imo. All except anything to do with us sending them arms ethanol fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 00:12
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drat, some of that is totally not what i would expect, especially in that era
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Jul 28, 2023 00:21
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Staluigi posted:drat, some of that is totally not what i would expect, especially in that era you're not that wrong though, for example the optimism about the saar offensive by france, very optimistic they were taking ground. the germans are weak etc. it's over the top. in reality there was barely any german resistance because they weren't on that side of the country, the french had decided to stop advancing for mind bogglingly bad reasons, the brits were basically doing nothing, and then the topic is dropped completely there are also bizarre articles like a single 'hitler wants to improve the situation for jews' before weeks of 'the jews are being harassed'. there is certainly more coverage about german attacks on christianity and the pope than on jews. ethanol fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 00:26
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The great war channel during their 600 episode WW1 week by week sometimes read newspaper articles on the coverage of the war. As you'd expect it was absurdly optimistic due to intense censorship and control of information. After that experience there was a general opinion that it had ve counterproductive so when WW2 rolled around there was more access to information.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:37
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ethanol posted:because i hate myself, i recently read every ny times front page from 1930-1941, so something like 4000 pages. I did it to get an idea of a couple things: a real chronology of events leading up to ww2, differences between day reports and what we know actually happened (surprisingly they were very well informed though, even stuff like purges are pretty well reported within 24 hours), the number of mentions of stuff happening to jews (the nytimes was reporting deportations to concentration camps as far back as 33/34), and just a general sense of the public mood in the years leading up to the war. Oh yeah the NYtimes archive is fascinating and well organized, I appreciate how it’s not just the front pages of the big events, it’s easy to flip through the sections to read whole stories to see what was considered important 12/6/41 or 11/21/63. I haven’t done quite the deep dive you have but I did poke around their coverage of big events & recall the Fall of Singapore seemed to be unexpected.
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Jul 28, 2023 02:26
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Oh yeah the NYtimes archive is fascinating and well organized, I appreciate how it’s not just the front pages of the big events, it’s easy to flip through the sections to read whole stories to see what was considered important 12/6/41 or 11/21/63. I haven’t done quite the deep dive you have but I did poke around their coverage of big events & recall the Fall of Singapore seemed to be unexpected. You need to pay to see all that right? I’m curious.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:35
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ethanol posted:because i hate myself, i recently read every ny times front page from 1930-1941, so something like 4000 pages. I did it to get an idea of a couple things: a real chronology of events leading up to ww2, differences between day reports and what we know actually happened (surprisingly they were very well informed though, even stuff like purges are pretty well reported within 24 hours), the number of mentions of stuff happening to jews (the nytimes was reporting deportations to concentration camps as far back as 33/34), and just a general sense of the public mood in the years leading up to the war. The fall of france is certainly an interesting time period, while you can certainly sense panic, but it was such an incredibly brief event, like a matter of days and it was over. And in that sense, without internet, the news paper only updating once in the morning, the daily reports were somewhat positive because of the success of the evacuation. And then suddenly a lot of reports about the battle of britain, which is mostly pretty positive because german losses racked up very quickly. I got a real feeling they were optimistic was that hitler would ask for a peace in his favor having walloped france's government, but of course, he invades russia instead within about a year... which he did a very bad job hiding plans for. everybody know he was going to do it seemingly by summer 41. this is a cool exercise and thank you for sharing it. On a kind of similar note, something I ponder a lot after closely watching multiple wars unfold is that there's a fallacy of people being aware of a war and assuming that there is, like, any degree of inherent inertia at all. Wars are about sudden changes, impactful adaptations, and both sides seeking out any possible way to minimize their opponent's advantages and maximize their own advantages. Nothing ever coasts along favorably without a huge amount of very deliberate effort and sacrifice to keep it as such. There's a sense often among observers of 'we've been experiencing success for the last six months so we'll probably still be succeeding in six months' and man, no, wars do not ever work that way. Sometimes the same advantages working in your favor now will still be in place six months from now, but that can't ever be banked upon. Instead more and more diverse advantages have to be continually sought to keep the successes flowing. There's also a speed at which things change in wars that isn't really replicated anywhere else in human affairs (with the exception of maybe the worst natural disasters).
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Jul 28, 2023 05:44
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The only wars that most of us have seen unfold live are Gulf War I and II, giving us pretty skewed opinions on what war looks like.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:49
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Kraftwerk posted:You need to pay to see all that right? I’m curious. It’s included with paid accounts but I believe it is also accessible through libraries, our local library includes access to the major newspapers through their online portal.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:54
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hadn't seen this posted russian forces have been targeting a ukrainian airfield for the past two nights, with some speculation that it's aimed at ukraine's storm shadow capability quote:Russia aimed a barrage of cruise missiles and exploding drones at a key Ukrainian air base overnight on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to ground the planes that carry Ukraine's Storm Shadow missiles, according to reports. this seems like a fairly sizeable portion of russia's daily cruise missile capacity based on the size of the barrages aimed at ukrainian cities on any given night. frankly outside of a few high visibility storm shadow hits my impression had been that russian anti-air and ew assets have been a pretty effective counter. if the russians are committing significant resources to try to limit their launches suggests that their presence is at least being felt
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Jul 28, 2023 07:09
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520 days of war and Russia figures out that you can use cruise missiles for blowing up military targets instead of churches and maternity hospitals? They're quick studies.
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Jul 28, 2023 07:18
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Kraftwerk posted:You need to pay to see all that right? I’m curious. If you're at or near a public university you can access it for free through their online portals/subscriptions (though if you're not directly affiliated you probably have to go to the library in person). LOTS of esoteric and hard to find newspapers at/available through public universities, including lots of state papers, minority papers (black people often had their own press, since their affairs were seldom covered in the usual papers) labor papers (newspapers were often owned by/in cahoots with the people they were striking against) non-English newspapers for the huge numbers of immigrants in multiple languages etc. Newspapers were the way the vast majority of people got their news before the rise of television, and some had multiple editions per day (thus the 'Evening Standard' or the 'Morning Review'). And anybody with enough money to rent a building and buy a printing press could set one up. I'm saying there were a LOT of newspapers out there.
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Jul 28, 2023 08:10
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spankmeister posted:520 days of war and Russia figures out that you can use cruise missiles for blowing up military targets Fixed that for you (they're still missling the hell out of grain shipping infrastructure in Odessa, which IIRC is a war crime).
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Jul 28, 2023 08:13
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I wanna be the guy in charge of repurposing russian cruise missile stocks, constantly pulling poo poo out of mothballs and going alright this one was developed for use against mobile artillery, let's use it against, mmm, an outdoor cafe. This one was designed for aircraft carriers? Oh definitely save that one for the orphanage on thursday
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Jul 28, 2023 12:05
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Staluigi posted:This one was designed for aircraft carriers? Oh definitely save that one for the orphanage on thursday  The ones meant for aircraft carriers can't hit a specific orphanages on purpose, because they just home in on the largest radar return on their flight path. In Odessa, that's either a hotel, a building with public toilets and beach changing rooms, or apartment blocks, depending on exactly the direction it's arriving from.
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Jul 28, 2023 12:14
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Tuna-Fish posted:
So you’re saying we need to send them that giant Chinese spy balloon we shot down to be a big rear end decoy and float it over some field on the outskirts of town?
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Jul 28, 2023 13:37
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MikeC posted:I am pointing to the two extremes of how you can view the development. The tweet shows the defenses on the western branch of the arrow in the picture below heading toward Verbove. This is a nice map. I don't think it matters exactly where on this defensive line the Ukrainians breach, once they're through they can move behind the line and along it and defenders elsewhere will have to fall back to avoid enfilade or encirclement. It's an interesting direction they seem to have chosen here. The fortifications and trenches are considerably further from each other in this section for some reason - some geographic feature meaning they were forced to build in a weaker pattern at this location maybe?
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Jul 28, 2023 13:48
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Chalks posted:This is a nice map. I don't think it matters exactly where on this defensive line the Ukrainians breach, once they're through they can move behind the line and along it and defenders elsewhere will have to fall back to avoid enfilade or encirclement. I'm not an expert but I assume they've just fortified the local vantage points and then ignored (or fortified less) where there are sharp inclines for attackers and multiple defensive lines can cover each other https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-jmrgp/Ukraine/?center=47.42112%2C35.8889&zoom=11&base=4 
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Jul 28, 2023 14:08
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Chalks posted:This is a nice map. I don't think it matters exactly where on this defensive line the Ukrainians breach, once they're through they can move behind the line and along it and defenders elsewhere will have to fall back to avoid enfilade or encirclement. FYI I am a dumbfuck. The eastern arrow points to Verbove not the pin. 
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Jul 28, 2023 14:31
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IFV chat Australia just selected the Korean Redback IFV over Rheinmetall's Lynx. The former was not down selected for the US XM30 program and the latter is one of the finalists. I'm really, really curious if Australia and/or the US are taking intel from the Ukraine war into consideration for these procurements. Though I recognize we're unlikely to learn one way or the other for years, if ever.
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Jul 28, 2023 15:57
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Ynglaur posted:IFV chat quote:The IFVs will be built at a Geelong factory in Defence Minister Richard Marles's electorate
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Jul 28, 2023 16:07
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Rheinmetall builds vehicles (Boxer) in Australia.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:19
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If you believe them, he removed himself from the selection process due to that conflict of interest and specifically deferred the process to another minister. I did also read that said minister was toey about giving it to SK because of the optics, which says to me that it was the preferred option but they were wondering what they could get away with. Budzilla posted:Rheinmetall builds vehicles (Boxer) in Australia. I like to think that it’s karma for them rejecting my job application for that facility without so much as even an interview 
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Jul 28, 2023 16:31
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I kind of agree with a post from Thomas Theiner from a few months ago that Western (forgive me for including Australia in this over-generalization) militaries have too much light infantry and too little mechanized infantry right now. Light infantry is relatively inexpensive and keeps your paper strength higher, but just isn't anywhere near as effective in a real shooting war. Heck, look at all of the armored vehicles the US had to buy for Iraq and Afghanistan. Why did they do that? Because light infantry battalions don't have any organic protected mobility. That's definitely a lesson Ukraine is re-teaching us. The latest podcasts with Michael Koffman and Rob Lee point out that one of the things Ukrainian units need is just basic off-road mobility. Armored mobility is best, but even Toyota Hiluxes are a huge enabler in terms of logistics. I'm actually starting to think that, in addition to converting light infantry to mechanized infantry, the US shouldn't have tank battalions. I'm becoming doubtful that we'll never again see a tank battalion on line assaulting anything. Instead, I wonder if something that looks a bit like an armored cavalry squadron makes more sense. Have three companies of mechanized infantry and one tank company. That gives the battalion commander an "armored fist" if they need it, but for most operations the tank company would likely be split up to have one platoon support each infantry company. Heresy, perhaps, for a former tank officer to say such, but... 
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Jul 28, 2023 18:07
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Ynglaur posted:I kind of agree with a post from Thomas Theiner from a few months ago that Western (forgive me for including Australia in this over-generalization) militaries have too much light infantry and too little mechanized infantry right now. Light infantry is relatively inexpensive and keeps your paper strength higher, but just isn't anywhere near as effective in a real shooting war. Heck, look at all of the armored vehicles the US had to buy for Iraq and Afghanistan. Why did they do that? Because light infantry battalions don't have any organic protected mobility. To be fair the Kharkiv offensive did feature a full size tank battalion assault. I suppose you can argue that it was only enabled by the enemy loving up to a catastrophic degree that is unlikely to be repeated in future wars, but betting against the human ability to gently caress up catastrophically seems like a bad move. I think you're probably correct that armor concentrations are going to be the exception rather than the rule going forward though.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:16
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Ynglaur posted:I kind of agree with a post from Thomas Theiner from a few months ago that Western (forgive me for including Australia in this over-generalization) militaries have too much light infantry and too little mechanized infantry right now. Light infantry is relatively inexpensive and keeps your paper strength higher, but just isn't anywhere near as effective in a real shooting war. Heck, look at all of the armored vehicles the US had to buy for Iraq and Afghanistan. Why did they do that? Because light infantry battalions don't have any organic protected mobility. This sounds suspiciously close to the organization of a BTG. 
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Jul 28, 2023 18:21
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Re: Tanks Is it possible that this is extrapolating too much out of this war when there are very peculiar circumstances that may not be applicable if it was the US Armed Forces fighting instead of a hodgepodge of civilian soldiers lacking critical competencies, equipment, and capabilities? Re: Light Infantry. I agree but no one outside the United States is willing to actually spend money. Canada can't even staff its puny armed forces of 100k total across all branches because people can make equivalent money at minimum wage with a semi reasonable working day with no threat of being deployed and shot at.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:41
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The ecnonomist published what is essentially the last War on the Rocks podcast in article form, good read if you haven't heard the podcast already. https://www.economist.com/by-invita...ussian-defences
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Jul 28, 2023 18:47
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MikeC posted:Re: Light Infantry. I agree but no one outside the United States is willing to actually spend money. Canada can't even staff its puny armed forces of 100k total across all branches because people can make equivalent money at minimum wage with a semi reasonable working day with no threat of being deployed and shot at. I actually looked up Canadian Armed Forces pay the other day and it's a lot higher than I thought. Way higher than minimum wage. Like a private in the army starts at around 42k at the low end up to 61.5k on the high end. Assuming you get the higher federal minimum wage (16.65/h) and can get 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year. You're looking at $34.6k. Pretty big difference. https://forces.ca/en/life-in-the-military/ The Canadian Armed Forces are super dysfunctional but I don't think pay is necessarily the reason when pay on the low end for Corporals is over 70k a year. Not many other jobs will pay that right out of high school with no other education. Having to be deployed or shot at or not having a say over where you live? Yeah that's a bigger barrier to convince people to join IMO. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 18:48
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WarpedLichen posted:This sounds suspiciously close to the organization of a BTG. The BTG is not a bad task organization per se. I think it poor because it is fundamentally brittle. It has a bunch of enablers, but not enough staff to synchronize them, and not enough organic maintenance, recovery, or supply to stay in a fight for very long. It basically takes the attitude of, "I will have a ton of alpha strike capability and by so having won't need to worry about anything 72 hours from now." MikeC posted:Re: Tanks MikeC posted:Re: Tanks Oh, certainly! But peer and near-peer threats will continue to have pervasive surveillance, will continue to have precision anti-armor munitions, and will continue to need to be defeated in complex terrain. I'm not making a "tanks are obsolete" argument. Far from it! I'm making a force employment argument the default unit size for combined arms ought to be battalions rather than brigades, and that the ratio of infantry to armor ought to be 3:1 rather than 2:1. (Note: US brigades almost always task organize their companies between battalions anyways. This is good, but I think it's simpler and builds greater cohesion to just start in the force structure you're going to use anyways.) And I agree that most of Europe seems perfectly fine to continue having the US protect them: an unhealthy dynamic for both my country and Europe.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:50
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Talking to Canadian Navy sailors around the mid oughties, they seemed to have a pretty good time of it... not sure how bad things are now though.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:51
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Maybe I am under the belief of a stereotype but are soldiers working 8 or 9 hour days (knew a couple of ex CF guys)? I was under the impression you work "'till the job is done" and that means on a per hour basis your pay is actually dog poo poo.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:51
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MikeC posted:Maybe I am under the belief of a stereotype but are soldiers working 8 or 9 hour days (knew a couple of ex CF guys)? I was under the impression you work "'till the job is done" and that means on a per hour basis your pay is actually dog poo poo. I calculated my average work week when I left in 2005. From 2000-2005 I averaged 80-hour work weeks. For five years. Straight. Some of it was poor field grade leadership. Some of it was just "the job."
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Jul 28, 2023 18:54
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Nam Taf posted:If you believe them, he removed himself from the selection process due to that conflict of interest and specifically deferred the process to another minister. I did also read that said minister was toey about giving it to SK because of the optics, which says to me that it was the preferred option but they were wondering what they could get away with. One thing the Germans are hilariously famous for is talking up big procurement to get a slice of the manufacturing pie and then reducing their orders once locked in. So, if it was me involved in the tender process, I would have completely removed Berlin's pledge of ordering a 100 machines or whatever just because it was odds on to be removed later.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:58
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