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DarklyDreaming posted:Protect against drone-dropped munitions. They're pretty useless against almost anything else man-portable like antitank missiles or strafing runs from planes (And if not outright useless, there are many things that do the job better) but they will save the crew's life when someone attaches a cheap grenade to a slightly more expensive quadcopter. Something no one who made any tanks currently fielded by the world's militaries prepared for Ok, but what if they attach two grenades, and stagger dropping them by like half a second?
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Dec 16, 2023 01:32
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DarklyDreaming posted:Protect against drone-dropped munitions. They're pretty useless against almost anything else man-portable like antitank missiles or strafing runs from planes (And if not outright useless, there are many things that do the job better) but they will save the crew's life when someone attaches a cheap grenade to a slightly more expensive quadcopter. Something no one who made any tanks currently fielded by the world's militaries prepared for Ah thank you, I was too hung up on the atgm/jav issue, stopping cheap drone grenades makes a lot of sense. They rapid technology change in this war is scary af.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:36
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Volmarias posted:Ok, but what if they attach two grenades, and stagger dropping them by like half a second? Well, they have effectively caused you to double the amount of ammo needed to attempt to disable the vehicle which has a bunch of side effects (the drone that could take out two things can only take out one, you cant travel as far/as fast, etc). Plus if you are staggering the drop it means you have to stay on station longer, even if its half a second.
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Dec 16, 2023 04:01
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https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/ The funniest part about this is NATO is near the bottom of the average MAGA voter's list of priorities, while it's a crushing blow to tankie hopium.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:21
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Quixzlizx posted:https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/ That was a Republican addition, too, I believe.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:37
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Quixzlizx posted:https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/ I cannot imagine "respecting the rule of law" to be high on the list of things El Presidente de por vida will do, so this isn't as much of a sop as I'd like.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:37
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It's insane that it was needed but I'm glad they did it. I guess they learned their lesson with abortion. We need more preventative laws in place now that Trump is a thing and his brand of insanity will most likely continue even if he is gone.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:43
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Volmarias posted:I cannot imagine "respecting the rule of law" to be high on the list of things El Presidente de por vida will do, so this isn't as much of a sop as I'd like. Leaving NATO isn’t something that the President can just do, though: it requires the rest of the government (and some private sector entities) to behave differently. This law is telling them “if Congress didn’t say so, ignore it and keep doing what you were doing before”, and provides legal protection for people when they do.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:46
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The POTUS can also just decide to sit on his hands when NATO or some other US ally gets attacked, so there's that too. There's no realistic way of forcing president Trumputin to send material or troops against president Putrumpin's army by legislature.
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Dec 16, 2023 23:43
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I'm not going to doom post (I say after writing and deleting several screeds), I'm just going to say that the years 2016-2021 taught me not to trust too strongly in what laws say should happen vs what actually happens.
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Dec 16, 2023 23:57
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At the end of the day, even literal guard rails can only do so much to prevent someone from grabbing the wheel and veering off a cliff.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:01
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Volmarias posted:I'm not going to doom post (I say after writing and deleting several screeds), I'm just going to say that the years 2016-2021 taught me not to trust too strongly in what laws say should happen vs what actually happens. Are you saying that it’s imperfect or that it’s worthless?
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Dec 17, 2023 00:03
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Subjunctive posted:Are you saying that it’s imperfect or that it’s worthless? I'm saying that the guy whose entire political career consists of "Ah! Nevertheless," and whose two political objectives seem to be 1) whatever Strongmen say they want and 2) whatever allows him to punish his political enemies might be inclined to ignore laws, and to appoint people based on loyalty, with no consideration of competence. You know. Like he did before. When a lot of the people who held him back from really loving things up hadn't "retired." I have exactly zero expectations of Congress actually retaining any limitations on what he says or does if he wins again. But again, I'm specifically trying to not Doom post here.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:11
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golden bubble posted:https://twitter.com/aronlund/status/1735588912460968011 Might as well mention the irony. Erwin Rommel was an old WW1 veteran just like Hitler and served as Hitler's bodyguard's commander for a while. He became truly famous first in France but especially in North Africa, gaining the nickname Desert Fox. Returning to Europe, he was charged with the defense against allied invasion. Eventually, he was injured in an allied air attack. He was also involved in the failed July Plot by German officers against Hitler, which became fatal to Rommel when Hitler survived the bomb. Once his involvement became clear to Hitler, he ordered him to die one way or another. At his hospital bed, Rommel chose suicide to save his family. Prigozhin also had similarities in his background with Putin (born in St. Petersburg) and we knew him as "Putin's chef" because Vlad trusted him to cater personally in his official dinners. From catering he expanded to mercenary business, gaining notoriety in Bakhmut, frequently publically questioning the decisions of the Stavka. In the end, he openly rebelled and send his mercenaries toward Moscow, but for some reason flinched and stopped the operation even though blood had already been drawn. For a while it seemed like things were settled, but then Prigozhin's private jet was shot down and now he's dead. So: - personal bodyguard of the Leader - publically revered for accomplishments - strong disagreement with leadership at late stage - participation in a plot against the Leader - after which the Leader retaliates - death or injury from airplane Yeah, Africa Corpse is fitting.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:28
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWjMr3RZ8Ss Latest video by the Austrian military academy guy. It concludes what we all expected. That the offensive had failed. It sums up some of my suspicions like how the Ukrainians lacked long range attack assets and had zero air support for the offensive and also adds how they diluted their modern western forces across 3 fronts instead of doing what the US suggested and making a big push for Melitopol. There are some disturbing statistics about how the Russians are able to outproduce Ukraine on drones and precision missiles and overall the strategic situation isn’t looking good anymore. Edit: Theres a summary for how much western support/aid Ukraine is getting and it’s basically dried up since July. It was never enough to win the conflict and now it’s not enough to even keep Ukraine afloat while Europe keeps dilly dallying and doing exactly gently caress all about the problem. I’m beginning to think the various nations of the world have quietly decided to pull a Homer Simpson retreat into the bushes act on Ukraine and let Putin win. We have constantly talked poo poo about Russia as a spent force that can’t do anything and I’m just not seeing that. I think they used dispensable mobiks and penal battalions giving everyone the impression of incompetency while their real forces got their poo poo together and are taking out Ukrainian forces they can’t afford to lose. By this time next year Russia could very well be occupying Dnipro, Kharkiv and Kherson if the west doesn’t take measures to deliver sufficient aid to stop it. It’s okay to hate Russia, I hate them too. But everyone’s made the terrible mistake of underestimating them. Now the Ukrainians are going to pay the price. Short of substantial upgrades in Ukrainian force multipliers and long range capabilities I can’t see them going back on the offensive ever again. There just isn’t enough of the good stuff left to do it. It’s time to stop huffing the copium and face facts. Ukraine is losing this conflict. small tactical victories are not changing the fact that Russia has fought wars of attrition for its entire history and has always won them. It will win one against Ukraine too and the west has only itself to blame for it. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 00:51
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Re: Left bank operations near Kherson https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-river-russia.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur (Paywalled) Confirms that UAF operations on the eastern bank of the Dnipro aren't an attempt to open a new axis of advance into the Russian-held regions of Kherson and Zaporizhizia. Descriptions by the men involved indicate that it is more of a "hunt" to inflict attritional losses at a favourable rate using the infantry, one area where the UAF has demonstrated superiority vs their Russian counterparts. Nonetheless casualties remain heavy with evacuation of the dead and wounded difficult. One anecdote lists a body that has been left for months near a drop-off point on the east bank. Some frustration, at least among those interviewed, about the overly rosy picture the UAF high command puts out occasionally.
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Dec 17, 2023 01:23
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Subjunctive posted:Are you saying that it’s imperfect or that it’s worthless? “Conflict is inevitable, and in this conflict power must be challenged by power. That fact is not recognized by most of the educators, and only very grudgingly admitted by most of the social scientists.” Reinhold Niebuhr I’d say laws (and constitutions) have to be backed by power and if they cease to be backed by power, they don’t do much.
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Dec 17, 2023 02:03
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Kraftwerk posted:There just isn’t enough of the good stuff left to do it. It’s time to stop huffing the copium and face facts. Ukraine is losing this conflict. small tactical victories are not changing the fact that Russia has fought wars of attrition for its entire history and has always won them. It will win one against Ukraine too and the west has only itself to blame for it. What would a loss look like in your view? What would a win look like? Because it looks like the original Ukrainian "win," something that seemed like a miracle at the time, was Russia getting beat back and unable to capture Kyiv and do regime change. What's the possibility in your view of Russia being able to capture Kyiv and implement regime change? Also, what was the last war of attrition that Russia won against a formidable adversary? Seems like they really bit off more than they can chew with Ukraine.
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Dec 17, 2023 02:37
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MikeC posted:Re: Left bank operations near Kherson Here you go
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Dec 17, 2023 02:48
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Kraftwerk posted:There just isn’t enough of the good stuff left to do it. It’s time to stop huffing the copium and face facts. Ukraine is losing this conflict. small tactical victories are not changing the fact that Russia has fought wars of attrition for its entire history and has always won them. It will win one against Ukraine too and the west has only itself to blame for it. Have you ever been right about anything? You know what was a war of attrition for Russia? Afghanistan. Know how that went? They loving lost, badly. You know what was a war of attrition for Russia? WW2. Which they were losing without massive loving aid from America. Nearly half a million trucks, nearly 20,000 airplanes, over ten thousand tanks, tractors, a million and a half blankets, millions of tons of cotton and food and fuel. 15 million pairs of boots for an army that maxed out at like 34 million in WW2. Your rear end had shoes on there was a drat near even chance they came from America. Where exactly is this myth of a unilaterally competent Russia army coming from in your mind? It's not reality.
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Dec 17, 2023 02:49
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small butter posted:What would a loss look like in your view? What would a win look like? I suppose it depends how you interpret Clausewitz. Every day that Ukraine continues to exist is them meeting their victory condition. But Russia seems to be showing no sign of tiring of this war. There’s no internal dissent that poses a meaningful threat to Putin and they don’t seem to be running out of equipment and troops. On the contrary it looks like they are finding ways to evade sanctions and gear up their war effort to the degree that there are more Russian troops now than there were before. As summarized in the video I posted the Russians have destroyed something like 50% of Ukraines infrastructure last winter with near constant missile barrages and bombardment. The Ukrainians managed to fix some of it and now it’s an open question if they can defend the rest. The war at this point ends in one of two ways if the west continues to delay or withhold its financial and military support. Either Ukraine realizes they can’t make any gains on the battlefield and cedes territory, or the Russians break them and march on Kiyiv for full regime change. I think the latter could happen if Ukraine loses enough people. They’re already having manpower issues. The average age of the UAF forces seems to be pushing past 40 and these are some of the best of their society being slaughtered on a battlefield for absolutely nothing. Russia has more people, a military industry that Ukraine can’t touch while Ukraines entire supply line is driven by western aid. It’s not sustainable. For me the Ukrainian win would be driving the Russians out of its borders as guaranteed by the treaties it signed when it agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for independence. This is not possible unless the west starts sending weapons on a scale that seems politically impossible at this time. And this is a political problem. If the USA wanted it could probably arm Ukraine to the point that they’d seriously threaten Moscow. But that isn’t going to happen because nobody wants to pay for it anymore. I think Putins war goals originally were to invade and force regime change or annex Ukraine entirely as a show of force. When that became untenable he decided to annex Donetsk and Luhansk and I think the war will end with territorial concessions to that degree. This is not unprecedented. Karelia is rightfully Finnish land that continues to be controlled by Russia. The winter war ended with territorial concessions. I don’t like it. I think it’s disgusting that it has to come to that but I don’t think it’s feasible for anything else to happen because of how large and dangerous Russia is. I also don’t think the west ever truly intended for Ukraine to score a battlefield victory against Russia and drive them out entirely. I think the west propped up Ukraine when the cost of doing so was 1 dollar for every 10 that Russia spent. Now that cost has dropped to something like a 1:2 ratio and it’s not as “worth it” as it used to be so they’re pulling the plug. Mulva posted:Have you ever been right about anything? Today Putin has made people politically apathetic or complicit and he’s co-opted any group that can oppose the war so an Afghanistan style movement to stop the war can never happen. Russia is completely under control. There won’t be a Revolution. For as long as Putin lives and wants to continue this war, it will continue he sets the tempo here. Ukraine is a war where they will literally run out of the people they need to ensure it can function as a successful economy and nation. Their finest people are being slaughtered on the battlefield while Russia is using people they don’t care about as cannon fodder for their more competent soldiers. The Lend-lease example further drives the point home that Ukraine needs a lot more than a light seasoning of weapons and rudimentary training to win this conflict while Russia can make everything it needs to continue the war and buy from China what it can’t. I’ve been right about the offensive failing from day 1. I called it. Ukraine didn’t have enough equipment to achieve strategic success on the battlefield. Tried to fight with nato tactics when its officer corps was stuck in a Soviet Mindset and crucially to achieve a combined arms offensive you need years of training and skill that Ukraine didn’t have. They also lacked air support which is what NATO nations crucially rely on for all their war planning. Now realizing the west can’t equip Ukraine with like 300 AFVs and a fleet of fighter/bombers to back them up in 6 months we have to resort to long range standoff weaponry which nobody seems to be in a hurry to provide despite the wet noises that are coming out of their mouths in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Washington. So unless there’s a radical change in the political situation in western governments and soon, Russia is gonna lock in their gains at the minimum and possibly going to take more territory if not overthrow the Ukrainian govt entirely. As for whether an insurgency persists thereafter, I’m sure it will but it’s a poo poo outcome and I fault the EU and Washington for doing far too little to help Ukraine win a serious victory. The Russian army isn’t competent in the way a NATO army is and I will happily agree with you on that. But they’re competent enough to adapt and improve their tactics in a way that can hurt Ukraine very badly and anyone who prematurely calls Russia out as a spent force that can’t do any better than it is is underestimating them at their own peril. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 04:59
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Quixzlizx posted:The funniest part about this is NATO is near the bottom of the average MAGA voter's list of priorities
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Dec 17, 2023 07:05
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https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91259 I was joking that banning the gays was Putin's peace offering to the GOP, but it's really not that far off the mark.
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Dec 17, 2023 07:26
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Well, glad to know that Russia will just take some of Ukraine's Territory, and that will be the end of that. They definitely won't spend the next several years absorbing and digesting while also preparing to conquer the rest of Ukraine. Guess it's time for Kiev to Just Face The Facts!
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Dec 17, 2023 08:00
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Kraftwerk posted:
A lot of totally ahistorical things get posted in this forum but this is really impressive levels of historical denialism. Just totally wrong in almost every possible way and completely buying into post WW2 Soviet propaganda with 0 thinking applied. Saying that, I do think that the West needs to step up and send more shells as a matter of urgency or Ukraine will continue to slowly be pushed back over the coming year via Russia's locally superior firepower and high tolerance for casualties.
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Dec 17, 2023 08:57
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Kraftwerk posted:We have constantly talked poo poo about Russia as a spent force that can’t do anything and I’m just not seeing that. I think they used dispensable mobiks and penal battalions giving everyone the impression of incompetency while their real forces got their poo poo together and are taking out Ukrainian forces they can’t afford to lose. Lol this just keeps coming up doesn't it? You're wrong. There is no secret held back force that Russia will use "any day now" to push towards the Dnipro or whatever. They are barely able to replenish their losses and have no major offensive capability left. Best they can do is keep Ukraine fixed along the entire eastern front.
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Dec 17, 2023 09:23
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spankmeister posted:Lol this just keeps coming up doesn't it? You're wrong. There is no secret held back force that Russia will use "any day now" to push towards the Dnipro or whatever. They are barely able to replenish their losses and have no major offensive capability left. Best they can do is keep Ukraine fixed along the entire eastern front. Dude they have been launching offensive actions towards avdiivka for weeks at this point
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Dec 17, 2023 11:13
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A big flaming stink posted:Dude they have been launching offensive actions towards avdiivka for weeks at this point I said major offensive capability, not grinding your troops to paste for minimal gains.
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Dec 17, 2023 11:29
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A big flaming stink posted:Dude they have been launching offensive actions towards avdiivka for weeks at this point Russia has been trying to take Avdiivka since 2014.
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Dec 17, 2023 12:04
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the success of the offensive towards avdiivka is not in dispute! it's the fact they are capable of launching such an offensive that is the proof contrary to spankmeister's assertion!
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Dec 17, 2023 12:20
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A big flaming stink posted:the success of the offensive towards avdiivka is not in dispute! it's the fact they are capable of launching such an offensive that is the proof contrary to spankmeister's assertion! You have very poor reading comprehension, and funny ideas about what constitutes proof. I said that the Russians do not have capacity for a major offensive. The offensive at the start of the invasion was a major offensive. The offensive in Avdiivka is not at all major.
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Dec 17, 2023 12:31
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I don't want to sound loony, but is it possible that: 1. If Russia is able to advance on Ukraine, the US and/or coalition partners intervene military in an obvious way? 2. What about in secret? Blowing poo poo up via hacking, or with physical covert teams, etc.? ("What, that's not our planes, and it's Little Green Men flying them.") 3. The US sends money/equipment to Ukraine without congressional approval. Is there any avenue for this? The reason I ask is that it just seems like Ukraine falling or capitulating would be a terrible consequence for the West and especially Europe. I imagine a lot of State Department and Defense folks would not like to sit idly by during such an event.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:08
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small butter posted:I don't want to sound loony, but is it possible that: 1. Very unlikely. Who would be willing to risk provoking a direct military conflict with Russia? What government has the public's mandate to get into a shooting war? 2. This would be very difficult legally, logistically and in terms of keeping it covered. 3. That would be illegal and whoever did so would go to jail for embezzlement. Well, in theory Biden could promise to pardon anyone in the military who gave government property to Ukraine, but I don't think that is going to happen. It's not likely that Ukraine would just suddenly capitulate, at any rate. But in February 2022 that was considered as a realistic scenario, and in that situation the west couldn't have done much directly.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:18
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small butter posted:I don't want to sound loony, but is it possible that: This won't happen, but it also doesn't need to happen. If there was greater urgency a deal could be struck in Congress for the aid - the reason it hasn't happened is because it requires giving up some degree of domestic policy objectives for foreign policy objectives. For the time being, with fronts mostly frozen, neither Democrats nor Republicans have any strong pressure to change their current stance. If Russia starts getting wins, there will be a lot more pressure applied to both sides to get a deal - it won't happen by executive fiat, there will just be a few individual congresspeople who will accept a slightly worse deal than is currently on the table because the conditions call for it. To put a bit more detail, the current dead-in-the-water versions are "Ukraine and Israel both get military aid (and emergency civilian aid for Israel and Palestine)", which is what the Dems would prefer, and "Ukraine and Israel both get military aid, but also anti-immigration policies (and emergency aid for Israel, but less likely to include Palestinians)", which is what the Republicans (that are willing to make deals, obviously there's the faction of obstructionists that will never vote yes) have been pitching. The compromise that Biden is currently willing to push the Dem side to accept is "Ukraine, Israel, and the half of the immigration stuff that creates jobs in the immigration system to process claims and deport if they don't meet the threshold, but not the stuff that says we have to go back to Trump-era policies" If things get truly dire, Biden could give more ground on immigration, or Republicans that generally like military spending could do the same. The main reason it hasn't already happened probably boils down in part to each side assuming they will be in a better position to get what they want after the 2024 election - Dems might lose the Senate, but they have a decent chance of picking up some spots in the House, and generally the Senate Republicans are easier to bargain with if only because they actually follow the leader instead of devolving into cannibalism every time compromise happens. That said, if Trump wins then it becomes much tougher, obviously. Still, the lame duck period could have a decent chance of getting something through if that comes to pass Edit: The relative urgency of the Israel/Palestine half of that compromise might also increase enough to force a deal before anything changes for Ukraine. As I understand it, there's only a couple (not totally predictable) months worth of reasonable conditions for an offensive between now and May anyways because of the mud season and all, so it doesn't really make sense to get so doomer about it. Obviously it would be better if more things could be stockpiled starting now, but the whole reason people were putting all the eggs in the basket of the most recent failed offensive is because there wasn't going to be time for another one before the terrain hosed things up, and that terrain issue is just as bad for Russia BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 15:33
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Do all military operations need Congressional approval? I imagine that the US does a lot of poo poo that Congress does not necessarily know about until inquired about after the fact. For example, I'm not sure whether Congress approved the US causing an internet blackout in North Korea at the end of 2014.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:35
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Volmarias posted:Well, glad to know that Russia will just take some of Ukraine's Territory, and that will be the end of that. They definitely won't spend the next several years absorbing and digesting while also preparing to conquer the rest of Ukraine. Guess it's time for Kiev to Just Face The Facts! Don’t misunderstand me. Russia would do exactly that. The problem here is that Moscow can win this war with its current assets and relationships. Ukraine’s victory comes down to fickle decisions made in Washington since Europe seems incapable of stepping up to meet its defense obligations. There is a play where Ukraine tries to join NATO or EU with what’s left of it if they can cede territory and stop the war. But it’s just as risky a play as letting the war continue and hoping for the best. Unless western countries get serious about this arsenal of democracy thing Ukraine is in deep poo poo and is losing its future through battlefield casualties. The people dying on the Ukrainian side are its labor pool and the ones who are needed to build up Ukraines economic and cultural future. It’s a deep and irreplaceable loss. Russia doesn’t care about the people it’s sending to die for this. They’re happy to get rid of them. spankmeister posted:Lol this just keeps coming up doesn't it? You're wrong. There is no secret held back force that Russia will use "any day now" to push towards the Dnipro or whatever. They are barely able to replenish their losses and have no major offensive capability left. Best they can do is keep Ukraine fixed along the entire eastern front. They replenished their losses and added personnel to Ukraine while Ukraine is scrounging for whatever they can find. They absorbed the main thrust of the Ukrainian offensive while defending 3 fronts and immediately went on the offensive while undoing many of the tactical gains Ukraine fought hard for in the offensive. So maybe Russia doesn’t take all of Ukraine but they have the juice to fight and inflict losses on Ukraine while locking in what they took so far. The casualty ratios are too close for the pool of candidates Ukraine can draw on compared to what Russia can draw on and those they have left they can ill afford to lose if they want a functioning future in any kind of post war scenario where Ukraine is still a country.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:53
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BougieBitch posted:This won't happen, but it also doesn't need to happen. If there was greater urgency a deal could be struck in Congress for the aid - the reason it hasn't happened is because it requires giving up some degree of domestic policy objectives for foreign policy objectives. For the time being, with fronts mostly frozen, neither Democrats nor Republicans have any strong pressure to change their current stance. If Russia starts getting wins, there will be a lot more pressure applied to both sides to get a deal - it won't happen by executive fiat, there will just be a few individual congresspeople who will accept a slightly worse deal than is currently on the table because the conditions call for it. Ukraine has been getting a lot of money from different countries, I'd assume a significant part of that is being used towards arms purchases without all the fanfare of the military supplies allocated by Congress.
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Dec 17, 2023 16:11
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small butter posted:Do all military operations need Congressional approval? I imagine that the US does a lot of poo poo that Congress does not necessarily know about until inquired about after the fact. For example, I'm not sure whether Congress approved the US causing an internet blackout in North Korea at the end of 2014. Congress has the "power of the purse", meaning anything that costs money has to go through them somehow. It's not to that level of granularity, but you are talking about actions taken by US military or intelligence personnel in the US (or at least on US bases). That funding usually gets approved in a big omnibus bill, or more precisely what usually happens is the approval from a previous year gets re-approved, sometimes with a percentage tacked on for inflation or the like. Congress usually has little involvement on a tactical level - obviously it would be pretty bad opsec to tell the entirety of Congress, but there are subcommittees that probably get briefed on at least the broad strokes. At the very least, Congress probably DID approve a cyber ops division of whichever military or intelligence agency did the actual act, with the understanding that it would probably be used on any country that we have marked as hostile or belligerent or whatever the technical term is for "not at war, but also not doing business or diplomacy with". Maybe some of them thought it was going to be used to go after Iran or ISIS or whatever exclusively, but they at least could have predicted it if their staffers spent enough time reading the specifics. All of that to say that doing things in the Ukraine aren't part of the auto-renewal process for funding. Transfers to Ukraine have happened through a special dispensation that got approved when Dems had both sides of Congress from 21-22, and what got passed then was essentially able to dodge around some of that issue up until now by playing games with projected costs to maintain old gear or the expense of disposal or refurbishment or whatever. Essentially, it relied on the fact that we weren't TECHNICALLY producing new arms to send to them, we were just using up stockpiles and then, if the army felt the need to, they could request funding to fill those warehouses back up. I can't speak to specifics, but most likely they have to walk a bit of a tightrope on that - at the very least, they probably can't be giving anything newer than some particular year either for legal reasons or because the depreciation of the asset hasn't accumulated enough to bring it to 0. Think of it this way - items on a grocery store shelf have an expiration date, and once they hit that point it's fair to say they are worth $0, effectively. You can still totally eat them, and they often get donated to food pantries, but as far as the grocery store is concerned they are valueless. Most assets (other than real property) have something similar - depending on your accounting practices, it might be a fixed number of years or it might be tracked by how much you have to spend on upkeep. Essentially, even though they are clearly useful in the immediate term to Ukraine, the US can say "we are unlikely to be able to sell these because they are old, we don't want to continue to take up shelf space with them, and paying for additional shelf space just to hold on to them is throwing good money after bad, so giving them away is budget neutral at worst". Crucially, that logic only applies to arms of a certain age. It also means that you have to be able to include the cost of shipping them in your calculations and still end up neutral - that can be a problem. Ultimately, the sweet spot between "this is actual trash and we already threw it away before anyone was looking for it" and "this is new enough that the budget numbers don't pan out to be revenue neutral" is pretty narrow, and if you are actively pumping everything that is in there out, then you are only going to get some very small percentage added to it from month to month - the stuff in question seems to be 30+ years old in most cases, so basically the determining factor for how much there is to give will be how much was coming off the line in the Bush Sr or Clinton-era years. In any case, the volume of arms that would be decisive isn't going to be met by ancient stockpiles alone at this point, so if we want Ukraine to get something newer we need them to either have money to pony up from the EU or we need to approve US spending for military aid. Cyber stuff is a somewhat different story, but ultimately I don't know that it would be decisive - we know full well that the US military is giving advice and intel to Ukraine, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that may include disclosing certain security vulnerabilities or whatever. Frankly, that's probably part of the reason there was the recent news story about Russian breaches. There isn't any real benefit to the US doing it ourselves though - there are plenty of people in Ukraine with computer expertise, if there was some way to shut the entire Russian army down with the elite hacking squad no one would bother investing in physical armies SaTaMaS posted:Ukraine has been getting a lot of money from different countries, I'd assume a significant part of that is being used towards arms purchases without all the fanfare of the military supplies allocated by Congress. I already addressed this a bit in my follow-up post, but I would also say you should probably scrutinize that a bit - Ukraine has been getting a lot of ASSISTANCE, but that doesn't translate to getting CURRENCY, and certainly not on a continuous basis. They have been getting some, and they have spent some of that on US arms - I think that was reported on a fair amount even from the start in terms of the US having price sheets that they made suggestions on. At the same time, a lot of countries have been giving Ukraine existing stockpiles in a way that isn't all that dissimilar to how the US has been - they just don't have the kind of insane capacity that the US does, so when they give away some random old mortars they have to think REALLY HARD about it instead of just tossing it onto the pyre honoring the domestic military-industrial complex. In other words, I wouldn't assume that all aid dollars are equal. Ukraine can't get more mortar shells than are currently being produced, for starters, so it isn't like they can just move that slider all the way over by saying "no thanks" to the mish-mash of nonstandard tanks or APCs or whatever. Even best case, all the money allocated to Ukraine across all sources is never going to add up to enough to buy a full functioning army from the US or the EU. The US pays hundreds of billions a year just to keep our levels equal from year to year, that's not accounting for how many years we have been doing that. It isn't even clear that the EU HAS a functional army, certainly no single country does and even if you add them all up it probably doesn't come out to having a whole one to spare. There aren't really good substitutes to having domestic arms production and the GDP to support it staying open if you are in a multi-year war against someone who does. (Just to be clear though, this isn't to minimize the contributions the EU has made - they have made an honest effort in spite of how underfunded the various member state militaries have been historically. At the same time, on some level the reason these totals are what they are is because a lot of these numbers are more "gift card" than "cash". That's just politics - it's a lot more palatable and justifiable to pass a bill to give Ukraine "$1 billion in military training" than even $500 million in unrestricted funds, because you can say that paying domestic trainers gives job experience and provides useful data about the effectiveness of your training program and so on. If Ukraine had said "actually, we only want assistance in the form of a giant novelty check denominated in dollars or Euros", they probably would have got like 1/4 the aid, both from the US and the EU. ) BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 16:25
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small butter posted:2. What about in secret? Blowing poo poo up via hacking, or with physical covert teams, etc.? ("What, that's not our planes, and it's Little Green Men flying them.") Nenonen posted:2. This would be very difficult legally, logistically and in terms of keeping it covered. I feel like if the motivation was there though, this could definitely be done and would not be that hard. It has happened in other wars in the past. It's an open secret that's denied in public with an undercurrent of "so what are you going to do about it?". The only reason there's no western little green men is that the west would rather not have them be there. Which was and still is an issue with a lot of equipment as well.
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Dec 17, 2023 16:52
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Griefor posted:I feel like if the motivation was there though, this could definitely be done and would not be that hard. It has happened in other wars in the past. It's an open secret that's denied in public with an undercurrent of "so what are you going to do about it?". The only reason there's no western little green men is that the west would rather not have them be there. Which was and still is an issue with a lot of equipment as well. To be clear, what exactly are you supposing could be blown up remotely? It definitely has been done in the past, and could be done now, but one crucial difference is that the entire front is in allied territory. If we were going to StuxNet Russia, it would be blowing things up hundreds or thousands of miles from the front lines. Even then, it only works on computer systems, and generally requires either a physical device to be used or for someone to have internet-connected devices in a place that really shouldn't. I'm sure there are plenty of places in Russia that fit this bill, but on the balance I think the vast majority would cause problems to civilians rather than the military. We shouldn't WANT to cripple their hospitals or power stations, it's a war crime when Russia does it to Ukraine and it would be a war crime if it was done to Russia. The things that would be both impactful and reasonably justifiable are much narrower, factories producing arms and logistics routes that are specific to the war. The second has already happened a few times in physical infrastructure with the bridge to Crimea, but it is challenging to imagine a way to get an equivalently-impactful result digitally. As for the first, it depends on how the factories are operating - part of the reason StuxNet worked is because the specs for the nuclear facility were known with a good degree of specificity. It's not clear that you could do the same for factory lines - how different is a car factory from a tank factory? You also have to consider that even if substantial digital efforts WERE happening, they will probably be more effective the less obvious they are. It's a bit absurd to say "why doesn't the US conduct missions in secret" when you definitionally don't have enough information to know whether they are or aren't. Flashy isn't better - there's probably a lot more to be gained by continuously harvesting data about incoming and outgoing orders than there is in taking down the communications tower, so there should be zero observable difference between a competent cyber operation and no operation at all to any civilian Edit: I guess I didn't really address the "sending physical military over in secret" part, but fundamentally if you want to do something in secret you need to be ready to deal with the consequences if they are discovered. I think there have already been some foreign-legion-type people fighting in Ukraine from other countries, there wouldn't be that much difference between that and what you are suggesting. If the US is sending over weapons and Intel explicitly and random unaffiliated people who happen to have military experience, it's the same thing with slightly more plausible deniability. At the end of the day though, it's a very Hollywood movie/great men of history kind of argument to suppose that a elite squad of US Marines are going to be able to turn everything around in a war with hundreds of thousands on each side. The reason the front isn't moving is because there are massive numbers of people occupying space. If the US was going to send over enough people to make any real difference it wouldn't be much of a secret. Maybe Poland or someone could make a better go at it with their geographic proximity, but in practice there just isn't that much difference between that and just declaring war, and if the EU can't even agree on aid then I don't see how they are going to get on board with a member state picking a fight with Russia that way BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 17:16
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