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fatherboxx)
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The Ukrainian drone attack on the large building under construction in Moscow might foretell a move to do more of that to change the narrative in Russia about this war.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:18
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:
Where you from? What parts of that territory (and the people within) are inconsequential? What do you think Russia is doing and plans to do in the territory they hold? Also, gently caress off.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:19
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VideoGameVet posted:The Ukrainian drone attack on the large building under construction in Moscow might foretell a move to do more of that to change the narrative in Russia about this war. I think today's attacks (airfields, maybe semiconductor plant?) might be more impactful...
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Aug 30, 2023 00:21
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DTurtle posted:The current war does not come close. Again scale is not intensity. All you are saying is WWII was a bigger war. It was. A way to think about it is as Modern wars being a lot more dense. I mean poo poo the Germans used horses and mules for logistics. 750,000 horse drawn artillery pieces east walked in Russia. Think about how much longer that takes to move around than modern artillery
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Aug 30, 2023 00:21
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https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1696662851966968185?t=ppX_LFi7hIhdzqkmemFEWw&s=19
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Aug 30, 2023 00:22
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OddObserver posted:I think today's attacks (airfields, maybe semiconductor plant?) might be more impactful... Absolutely. Do we have a disabled aircraft count on that?
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Aug 30, 2023 00:22
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VideoGameVet posted:Absolutely. Russian state media claims 4 "damaged", but it would take some time to get satellite images to figure out if it means 4 with paint chips or 14 burned down.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:23
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VideoGameVet posted:The Ukrainian drone attack on the large building under construction in Moscow might foretell a move to do more of that to change the narrative in Russia about this war. As said many times before, lol no it hasn’t and won’t Also though, yeah I think the pessimists underestimate Ukraine’s will to fight. My friend originally from Mariupol was comfy here and could have stayed, but he went back to Ukraine to fight and lost his leg. His sister sends most of her money to Ukraine. Their third sibling is still there. They will not shrug and give in to a negotiated peace. And one day no matter how long Mariupol will be free again and we’ll blaze a ton of joints and blast Hey Sokoli late into the night
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Aug 30, 2023 00:25
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Also, lol https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1696665126110367925?t=yiw8bhT0hXDk3gUr25jOPg&s=19
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Aug 30, 2023 00:27
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:The thing is, I don’t see a pathway for Ukrainian success on the battlefield, miserable though that is. The question then becomes, is it sensible to throw away thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainian lives for a fait d’accompli - similar to the Volksturm at the end of WW2 - or to seek peace with the same eventual outcome in terms of a peace treaty, just with fewer dead soldiers. A negotiated settlement, painful though it may be, would save so many more lives that would otherwise be thrown away for nothing. You write like someone who learned everything they know about military affairs from podcasts.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:29
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:The thing is, I don’t see a pathway for Ukrainian success on the battlefield, miserable though that is. The question then becomes, is it sensible to throw away thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainian lives for a fait d’accompli - similar to the Volksturm at the end of WW2 - or to seek peace with the same eventual outcome in terms of a peace treaty, just with fewer dead soldiers. A negotiated settlement, painful though it may be, would save so many more lives that would otherwise be thrown away for nothing. Many of the British during World War 2 didn't see a path to victory when the Luftwaffe was bombing the country during the Battle of Britain. They fought on anyway because it was the right thing to do.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:30
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Mirificus posted:From: The Army’s Orphans: The United States Army Replacement System in the European Campaign, 1944–1945 How is that combat unit at the front moving? It’s walking. Even the Americans in WWII in Europe are mostly walking. Think about how much that walking spaces out time in combat. Modern wars are not spaced out like that.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:50
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it seems impossible to definitively speak to the outcome of the war, it's such a complex thing that we get an incredibly patchy glimpse into. public support is an incredibly important factor and difficult to judge in the best of times that said, even if ukraine cannot decisively win the war i believe it's incorrect to say that a peace now will be identical to a peace later after a time of intense deadlock. a country that demonstrates it is more willing to carry on fighting even if it cannot decisively win can gain concessions at the negotiating table it might not otherwise in a hypothetical in which decisive end to the war was never possible for ukraine, it still obviously is in a better negotiating position in august 2023 compared to february 2022. how can you say for certain that the position might not improve further over the next twelve months?
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Aug 30, 2023 00:55
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:The thing is, I don’t see a pathway for Ukrainian success on the battlefield, miserable though that is. The question then becomes, is it sensible to throw away thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainian lives for a fait d’accompli - similar to the Volksturm at the end of WW2 - or to seek peace with the same eventual outcome in terms of a peace treaty, just with fewer dead soldiers. A negotiated settlement, painful though it may be, would save so many more lives that would otherwise be thrown away for nothing. Why do we have to do this on such a reliable schedule? It really is a cycle at this point
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Aug 30, 2023 01:09
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https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1696672977125793986?t=tCOInlYMINjvDJuMkxxOEw&s=19
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Aug 30, 2023 01:14
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Moon Slayer posted:https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1696672977125793986?t=tCOInlYMINjvDJuMkxxOEw&s=19 This looks more like a burning watermark to me.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:15
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I think its inaccurate to assume that a campaign of attrition necessarily favors Russia even with the population differential. At least in public sources it appears the Ukrainians feel that they are trading lives at a 1:3 ratio or better. Russia's population advantage may be that great, but given how careful Putin has been about drafting "important" Russians I doubt their population will withstand those sorts of exchanges. If he's scared to fully mobilize, why would anyone assume they can trade casualties at a losing ratio? The equipment ratio is a lot more important. A million Russians with mosin-nagants would mean nothing. It appears, per Oryx, that even on the offensive the Ukrainians are inflicting 2:1 losses in equipment. This ratio presumably gets more favorable as Russia scrapes the barrel and the Ukrainians get more equipment and their new formations gain experience. Just because the the west tries to avoid gauging success by the bodycount doesn't mean that attrition can't be a path to something like victory for Ukraine.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:20
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Sevastopol is being targeted too https://twitter.com/MargoGontar/status/1696679164479226343
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Aug 30, 2023 01:23
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Moon Slayer posted:https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1696672977125793986?t=tCOInlYMINjvDJuMkxxOEw&s=19 the announcement that 4 il-76s were "damaged" might have been underselling it
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Aug 30, 2023 01:24
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Deteriorata posted:The only people who can answer that question are Ukrainians, and they think that it is absolutely worth the price. They have no interest in negotiating anything at the moment. This is really the crux of the matter. It's easy for us to sit here where we aren't in danger of being maimed, killed, bereaved, or made homeless by war, and declare that any particular thing is obviously the right and moral course to take. I can totally understand where Mr SuperAwesome is coming from because, yeah, if Ukraine is going to accept a very similar outcome in the end which they could already get today, that's an awful lot of blood and treasure spent for very little. What exactly today's peace vs a peace agreed to in six months' time looks like, though, is a game of speculation to begin with. On the other hand you can just as easily frame it as a conflict where Russia must be defeated at any cost, down to the last Ukrainian child, and just as fervantly argue that the price in blood and treasure is very much worth paying. And you can similarly make the case that Ukraine shows credible signs of achieveing a strategic victory that will allow them to achieve a far more favorable peace deal. But, whilst we might in the West be paying some of the cost of treasure, we're not paying the blood, and the people who are doing so are the only ones who can decide how much of it they're willing to shed to reach their objectives. Given that there's an absolutely clear aggressor and victim party in this war, we should support Ukraine as much as we can for as long as they're willing to fight, but at the same time it's not an evil betrayal to raise the possibility of a negotiated peace. Maybe Ukraine will ultimately decide that they'd prefer to permanently cede something territorial to stop losing their limbs and lives. Maybe the opposite is true. It's not for us to declare a One True Course they must adhere to.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:29
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Air defenses going off in Kyiv, too, so a busy night all around.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:33
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As has been said countless times - Putin thinks he has a path to a kind of victory by waiting for the degenerate and declining West to get bored and abandon Ukraine, allowing him to isolate it (or for the West to pressure Ukraine to capitulate) and continue the war on more favourable terms. And even if the West doesn't completely abandon Ukraine (say Biden is reelected and the Europeans stay strong so support continues), then Putin likely believes he still has the military initiative and can 'freeze' the conflict on his own terms, a la the situation in many other states surrounding Russia (funny that there seem to be so many post-Soviet states with frozen conflicts, its almost like there's a pattern)  Ukraine believes that thanks to continuing Western arms shipments and training that they have growing capabilities, and feel they have the potential to liberate a lot more of their territory AND THEIR PEOPLE, perhaps all of them, via military means, before the conflict gets truly bogged down. The current counteroffensive hasn't gone as well as many had hoped - but neither did Kherson initially. They believe they can still do it, and given their motivation and earlier successes (plus Russian weaknesses), I think its far too early to count Ukraine out - the claims of the current situation being worse than the Somme are utterly absurd, and based in ignorance at best, or cynical misrepresentation at worst. So for all the hot takes about how Ukraine should negotiate now to save lives - neither side agrees with your assessment of the military situation, and until that changes neither side is going to be willing to negotiate, other than for keeping up international appearances.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:01
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So glad to find this thread. It's been very difficult to find any clear sources on this conflict for the same reason it was hard to find clear answers on Covid. Something to consider with regard to attrition is whether modern Russia has institutional resilience for it. Glantz spends quite a lot of time talking about this in 'When Titans Clashed' because, while you may have the warm bodies and you may even have the weapons, that's still not an army. The WW2 Soviet army had a remarkable institutional and organisational capacity. They had things like prebuilt armies, where it had units, designations, officers, NCOs and so on, it just needed bodies to be slotted into that pre-exisiting structure. It's never been the case of simply sweeping up however many people you can and shovelling them forward. Even if russia does fully mobilise (and it seems they may have to at some point) do they have the organisational capacity to do so in a useful way?
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Aug 30, 2023 02:02
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Snowman_McK posted:So glad to find this thread. It's been very difficult to find any clear sources on this conflict for the same reason it was hard to find clear answers on Covid. I think they fed most of their existing training cadre to the grinder last year. It's honestly surprising to me that the quality of the mobiks wasn't lower considering the stories about the lack of training infrastructure.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:50
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Snowman_McK posted:Even if russia does fully mobilise (and it seems they may have to at some point) do they have the organisational capacity to do so in a useful way? Based on what we've seen, it's been very mixed. Russia's prewar strategy was to use mobilized troops to fill out skeleton formations: a brigade equivalent may just be a battalion in practice, because the assumption is the other 2/3rds would be filled out with conscripts when needed, with experienced professional troops providing expertise. Many of those battalions were wrecked in the initial invasion, including the very important training cadres. The mobilization last year saw roughly two strategies: some of the mobilized were given very rudimentary training and equipment and sent to hold the line. The rest were given more cohesive training and formed into proper formations. The thing is, neither group has been very effective on the offensive. Russia remains very reliant on massed artillery to take ground and much of their elite light infantry has been savaged. They have done a decent job on the defensive, with the caveat that Ukraine appears to have a favorable casualty ratio against them.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:54
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Moon Slayer posted:https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1696648406041510067 IIRC, Tula is where KBP, a manufacturer of small arms, is located.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:57
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Looks like the Bryansk strike hit the Silicon EI Group plant. It’s one of Russia’s largest microelectronics manufacturers.
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Aug 30, 2023 03:12
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Again scale is not intensity. All you are saying is WWII was a bigger war. It was. I'm sure you are the expert on dense. You are claiming that a bush war where all that Americans did was smoke hash and rape civilians was more intensive than a war in which millions died or that they are in any way comparable. To which I say, lol. lmao.
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Aug 30, 2023 03:59
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Nenonen posted:I'm sure you are the expert on dense. Soldiers in Vietnam engaged in significantly more combat days per year than soldiers in WWII. That’s an objective and factual statement. This matters a great deal for the effects of combat causing things like PTSD (or other related combat stress reactions.) Modern conflicts are extremely hard on soldiers because they are in a lot more combat during deployments relative to historical wars even if their deployments are shorter. It’s a personal topic too. My grandfather was on Guadalcanal and was in one of the two machine gun squads that Johnny Basilone commanded. He spent decades in his retirement as a VFW chaplain ministering to Vietnam vets. This is one of the reasons I went to Kings Point instead of West Point. This war is going to gently caress up a lot of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. And it’s going to gently caress them up more than an equal amount of time in WWII as a soldier would have. What I’m telling you about is why.
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Aug 30, 2023 04:41
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Soldiers in Vietnam engaged in significantly more combat days per year than soldiers in WWII. That’s an objective and factual statement. And disingenuous. Getting bombarded by artillery day and night is way more intense than patrolling a jungle for guerrillas. How many Americans died per day of combat by your numbers?
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Aug 30, 2023 04:57
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Nenonen posted:I'm sure you are the expert on dense. The claim he is making is likely correct. I have seen repeatedly seen some variants of the claim that on average, a US infantryman spent 240 days under combat conditions per year while on average a US infantryman in the Pacific spent 40 days in combat on entire war. The key word average here is doing a lot of work and I am sure different US infantrymen in different theatres have large variations but I have never seen a rebuttal to that argument nor is it likely given the pace of WW2 operations that even the most heavily used formations would average out 240 days out of a year in combat. Some marines for example spent 77 continuous days under siege at Khe Sanh alone without rotation.
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Aug 30, 2023 05:05
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:The thing is, I don’t see a pathway for Ukrainian success on the battlefield, miserable though that is. The question then becomes, is it sensible to throw away thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainian lives for a fait d’accompli - similar to the Volksturm at the end of WW2 - or to seek peace with the same eventual outcome in terms of a peace treaty, just with fewer dead soldiers. A negotiated settlement, painful though it may be, would save so many more lives that would otherwise be thrown away for nothing. Supporting Ukraine is supporting their right to self determination. Are you under the impression they aren’t fighting of their own volition or something?
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Aug 30, 2023 05:38
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VideoGameVet posted:The Ukrainian drone attack on the large building under construction in Moscow might foretell a move to do more of that to change the narrative in Russia about this war. This sort of attack has been proven to heighten the Russian populace's support for the war
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Aug 30, 2023 06:09
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A big flaming stink posted:This sort of attack has been proven to heighten the Russian populace's support for the war Where's that proven at?
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Aug 30, 2023 06:14
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Again scale is not intensity. All you are saying is WWII was a bigger war. It was. I don’t. Again, the liberation of Crimea in WW2 involved similar numbers of soldiers as the current war, incurred similar casualties as the current war, and was completely over after a single month. That is why I described the current war not in any way close to as intense as WW2. I dont give a poo poo about your personal bug bear of time in combat in the WW2 pacific theater.
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Aug 30, 2023 06:26
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DTurtle posted:That is why I described the current war not in any way close to as intense as WW2. I think you don’t have a working definition of intensity. I’m using how much time soldiers spend in combat.
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Aug 30, 2023 06:45
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As a non-American, it's always seemed to me that Americans fetishize the PTO battles, like 'Bloody Tarawa' but when you compare it to ETO campaigns they were massively one-sided cakewalks over-hyped into these legendary epics.
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Aug 30, 2023 06:52
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poor waif posted:Comparisons with the Volksturm are laughable enough that I'm not sure they merit a response. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1696016757805179198 https://www.ft.com/content/5bcb359e-f0ae-475d-9773-b89c0ebe0a1b quote:But they also said that the age and ability of the soldiers they are sent varies wildly, as Ukrainian commanders on the front line are often unwilling to spare their best men. One volunteer who turned up in Germany was 71 years old. While it is good that Ukrainians have such motivated men to draw on, you would hope that they would be somewhat less aged. Even if you fully support Ukraine in their struggle, you must admit that having such old men in the army is not a good look and suggests they are having manpower issues. FishBulbia posted:The pathway to Ukrainian success seems a lot straighter and shorter than the pathway to Russian success How? It goes directly through minefields and prepared fortifications and an artillery imbalance that the Ukrainians themselves admit. The Russian path to victory involves Ukraine running out of manpower, which sadly seems more likely at this point - see above. ummel posted:If you don't fundamentally agree that it is honorable and good or whatever to die defending your homeland from foreign invaders, there's nothing else to be said. Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 30, 2023 06:52
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MikeC posted:The claim he is making is likely correct. I have seen repeatedly seen some variants of the claim that on average, a US infantryman spent 240 days under combat conditions per year while on average a US infantryman in the Pacific spent 40 days in combat on entire war. The key word average here is doing a lot of work and I am sure different US infantrymen in different theatres have large variations but I have never seen a rebuttal to that argument nor is it likely given the pace of WW2 operations that even the most heavily used formations would average out 240 days out of a year in combat. Some marines for example spent 77 continuous days under siege at Khe Sanh alone without rotation. Why the gently caress are we talking about the Pacific front like it was the crux of WW2, are you guys nuts? 84 years ago almost to the day (Happy new school year, Polish kids  ) the biggest war of the last century started in my city, on the ground, on mainland continent of Europe. Not some piece of water where most people involved are on ships and in military bases. How the gently caress can you compare fighting over islands and water to the march of armies and tanks through villages, towns and cities, razing many of them to the ground, some of them (including a few in Ukraine) twice by both sides. How does that make any kind of fair comparison when thinking about combat intensity? Am I the insane one here?
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Aug 30, 2023 07:05
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 11:53 |
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1696016757805179198 Ok you convinced me. I'll go tell the Ukrainians to give up because you don't see a path to victory. edit: A few weeks into the war, Russia was at the outskirts of Kyiv. A little over a year ago they held Kherson and were besieging Kharkiv. If they followed your principled stance to save lives since defeat was inevitable, would they have been in a stronger or weaker position to negotiate a peace settlement? BigRoman fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 07:11
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