The US will lose WW3

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The US will lose WW3

Nothus: Feb 22, 2001; Buglord

Danann posted:

Examples of misinformation in the grim darkness of the 21st century:
- Saying that Ukraine isn't inflicting a 1000:1 kdr against the Ork hordes
- That the Israelis can be defeated on the field of battle.
- Looking at the wrong economic statistics like food prices.
- Disparaging the name of Dark Brandon by saying that he isn't the greatest, smartest, most minority representative of all.
- Voting against the Democrats.

Crying about Navalny and then in the same breath calling for the same thing to be done to Trump.

# ? Feb 16, 2024 22:54

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# ? May 24, 2024 13:10

Nix Panicus: Feb 25, 2007

DancingShade posted:

Don't forget the only way to save democracy is to ban opposition parties and not hold elections.

Russia is isolating its people from all outside news sources and creating an information bubble. To counter this, we will be isolating our people from all outside news sources but in the name of freedom

# ? Feb 16, 2024 22:59

Nix Panicus: Feb 25, 2007

mawarannahr posted:

100% there have been multiple programs proposed in the last ~~decade~~ year to try to stir up a drug problem in China "to avenge the scourge of fentanyl."

The CIA has to be so mad they started a war to regain control over their opium empire and China just manufactured an alternative

# ? Feb 16, 2024 23:07

stephenthinkpad: Jan 2, 2020

Drug enforcement is literally the only thing China and the US and sit down and talk and reach some kind of agreement.

# ? Feb 16, 2024 23:50

FirstnameLastname: Jul 10, 2022

stephenthinkpad posted:

Drug enforcement is literally the only thing China and the US and sit down and talk and reach some kind of agreement.

they don't want the us to be able to blame them

# ? Feb 17, 2024 00:14

stephenthinkpad: Jan 2, 2020

Let the Mexicans take charge of the reverse drug war, it's only fair.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 00:24

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Nix Panicus posted:

The CIA has to be so mad they started a war to regain control over their opium empire and China just manufactured an alternative

Really weird how we suddenly got so permissive about prescribing opiates right when we took over the opium country :thunk:

# ? Feb 17, 2024 00:25

hubris.height: Jan 6, 2005; Pork Pro

The Oldest Man posted:

Your state-funded propaganda: boo
Our state-funded propaganda: yay

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

National Strategies and Policies:

...

This will all end in tears

a weapon to surpass the patriot act

# ? Feb 17, 2024 00:34

Nix Panicus: Feb 25, 2007

stephenthinkpad posted:

Drug enforcement is literally the only thing China and the US and sit down and talk and reach some kind of agreement.

When the Taliban outlawed opium production in Afghanistan the global supply of opiates cratered. It was the single largest and most successful anti-drug operation in all of recorded history. And then in a completely unrelated turn of events the US found a pretext to invade Afghanistan the next year, and under US control opium production skyrocketed, far surpassing previous output.

China, meanwhile, met global demand through industrial scale production of fentanyl, invading exactly zero countries in the process.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:14

Halser: Aug 24, 2016

text editor posted:

This is NYT reporting on one misinformation campaign yesterday:

lol

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:14

PawParole: Nov 16, 2019

stephenthinkpad posted:

Doesn't sound like the Somalians were smuggling actual usable missile parts for Iran. Probably decoys to rub in the faces of the Navy seals.

Now the Somalians are good guys in my book. Are they Shia?

*Somalis. And we aren�t Shia, in fact the furtherest thing from it. This is some neocon fantasy about Muslims all being in league together.

Those guys were probably smuggling food or oil to Aden or smuggling people out.

PawParole has issued a correction as of 03:47 on Feb 17, 2024

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:40

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Is there any direct evidence America is keeping the Myanmar civil war going? I think it's probably the biggest source of illicit natural opiates.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:57

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Weka posted:

Is there any direct evidence America is keeping the Myanmar civil war going? I think it's probably the biggest source of illicit natural opiates.

opiates are definitionally natural :science:

# ? Feb 17, 2024 03:58

Gripweed: Nov 8, 2018

mawarannahr posted:

opiates are definitionally natural

They�re from the earth.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 04:03

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/02/13/the_united_states_needs_national_military_service_1011380.html

quote:

realcleardefense.com
The United States Needs National Military Service
Andrew A. Michta
8�10 minutes

There comes a time when the traditional way of doing business no longer meets the requirements of the day. This is clearly the case when it comes to how the U.S. recruits its military. Ever since Richard Nixon ended the draft in 1973, the United States has maintained an all-volunteer force model, with our enlisted service members and officers proudly displaying the professional skill level no other armed forces in the world have been able to match. But this model is no longer capable of generating the numbers and reserves the country will need should we be forced into a war with Russia and China, not to mention potential further escalation in the Middle East or the Korean Peninsula. If the rates of attrition for equipment and personnel witnessed in Ukraine over the past two years are any indicator of what the next major war might look like, it is clear that even with America�s advantage in air power and precision weapons, in order to prevail in such a conflict the nation will need to have a pool of readily-available reserves.

During the last phases of the Cold War, generous defense budgets allowed the all-volunteer model to meet the nation�s defense need. This was in part because of the very size of the defense budget, but also that the United States confronted only one superpower adversary, the Soviet Union. U.S. defense spending during the Cold War peaked at close to 9.5% of GDP at the height of the Vietnam War, but even when it declined it averaged 6.9% of GDP between 1960-1990.[i] In contrast, after the Cold War U.S. defense spending between 1991-2021 ran on average around 3.9% of GDP (it currently stands at around 3.2%), while the cost of ever-more sophisticated weapon systems � to say nothing of the numerous campaigns America fought over the past twenty years during the Global War on Terror � has relentlessly reduced the purchasing power of those numbers.

But the dollars and cents spent on defense tell only part of the story. The other critical aspect is the numbers of service men and women that the United States has been able to field post-Cold War. Throughout the Cold War the combined personnel numbers of our military never dropped below two million, and in fact peaked at 3.5 million during the Vietnam war, which still relied on the draft to fill the ranks. [ii] In contrast, the overall size of the active U.S. military authorized end strength is today just over 1.3 million,[iii] with every service, save for the Marine Corps, having failed to meet its recruitment targets.[iv] And when one considers the readiness level, that number is smaller still. At the same time, while the United States faces potentially two simultaneous conflicts in the Atlantic and the Pacific, current personnel targets for the Russian military alone are set to create a force of 1.5 million[v], while today China boasts the world�s largest military estimated at over two million personnel, with increasingly sophisticated capabilities. There is also a mismatch in the amount of money we spend on defense relative to that of our two principal adversaries. The defense budget Vladimir Putin just signed has put Russia back at Cold War levels of spending while China is running the largest military expansion project in history, especially for the People�s Liberation Army Navy.

But it is not just about the personnel needed to generate a winning force in case of war. Another reason America must shift to national military service is the increasingly corrosive societal aspect of relying solely on the all-volunteer force. This has bred a culture of �security consumers� that has replaced the civic responsibility for national defense that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. For too long we have lived under the illusion that national security and defense are not among the key responsibilities of American citizenship. Over the past several decades we have created a consumer culture when it comes to national security, or � as an interlocutor told me recently � a �I-pay-my-taxes-so-the-common-defense-is-not-my-problem� view of national service. Setting aside the fact that such a view of the military profession is more fitting to the job description of a security guard at a shopping mall than the thousands of men and women who make sacrifices in life and limb to serve their country, it offers a blinding insight into the absence of any sense of shared obligation to fellow-citizens that the post-Nixonian military recruitment system has fostered. The Constitutional provision that the �Congress shall have power (�) to raise and support Armies�[vi] speaks directly to the American ideal of the citizen-soldier � one that we have largely forfeited. In a nation as diverse both in terms of ethnicity and wealth, we desperately need a place where young men and women serve together, rediscovering that there is a larger nation out there and re-learning that as citizens they owe the nation and each other a level of solidarity and support that has been all but driven out of our political discourse.

A national military service requirement makes sense on multiple levels. First, it will generate both the force and the reserves we need (and at a much lower cost). Second, it will foster a sense of national cohesion that we need more than ever at a time when the country could be pulled into a general war. Third, it will send a powerful deterrent message to our adversaries that the United States has awakened after three decades of strategic slumber, and that it stands ready to confront the challenges of an increasingly unstable and dangerous world. Finally, it will send a message to our allies, especially those in NATO, that their all-volunteer system needs to be replaced as well with one built around national military service, in order to generate the forces and capabilities that Europe needs to field if it is to forestall a wider war on the Continent.

Most politicians will consider the idea of introducing a mandatory national military service requirement to be a poison pill, and I realize full well that advocating for such a sea-change in how we generate our military power will be an uphill battle. But like so many aspects of our return to reality following three decades of post-Cold War delusions about the way the world works, this is about getting back to the basics when it comes to national power. The rapidly deteriorating security environment worldwide and the challenges it presents to America�s national interests makes it imperative that we speak plainly about what needs to be done. Simply put, as we rediscover the old verities of state-on-state competition, including readiness to wage war, we can either pretend that everything is fine and that the system is working as intended, or our political class can face up to the challenge and do the right thing.

There is no time to waste.

Andrew A. Michta is senior fellow and director of the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Views expressed here are his own.

atlantic council blob's angling for ukraine-style tactics of meat waves because neoliberalism can't reindustrialize its way out of a paper bag

# ? Feb 17, 2024 05:47

PawParole: Nov 16, 2019

If there�s any sort of draft in America the riots would be insane

# ? Feb 17, 2024 05:50

Trimson Grondag 3: Jul 1, 2007; Clapping Larry

I'd get so fuckin fat if there was a draft again.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 05:55

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

lol so rather than offering anyone anything, their big plan is naked coercion?

The lack of self awareness, particularly " the absence of any sense of shared obligation to fellow-citizens that the post-Nixonian military recruitment system has fostered. " is wild.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 05:56

Tempora Mutantur: Feb 22, 2005

joe biden's homeless to hero program (not a draft, jack)

# ? Feb 17, 2024 06:02

zetamind2000: Nov 6, 2007; ~~I'm an alien.~~

Danann posted:

quote:
Finally, it will send a message to our allies, especially those in NATO, that their all-volunteer system needs to be replaced as well with one built around national military service, in order to generate the forces and capabilities that Europe needs to field if it is to forestall a wider war on the Continent.

shake down the vassals for more men

:rubby:

# ? Feb 17, 2024 07:23

Livo: Dec 31, 2023

Nix Panicus posted:

When the Taliban outlawed opium production in Afghanistan the global supply of opiates cratered. It was the single largest and most successful anti-drug operation in all of recorded history. And then in a completely unrelated turn of events the US found a pretext to invade Afghanistan the next year, and under US control opium production skyrocketed, far surpassing previous output.

China, meanwhile, met global demand through industrial scale production of fentanyl, invading exactly zero countries in the process.

Just for further context, here's a 2001 UN report on the opium ban. There's also a fairly good detailed article here as well on the subject

quote:

Afghanistan was the main source of the world's illicit heroin supply for most of the 1990s. From late 2000 and the year that followed, the Taliban enforced a ban on poppy farming via threats, forced eradication, and public punishment of transgressors. The result was a 99% reduction in the area of opium poppy farming in Taliban-controlled areas. The evaluation uses multiple comparison areas: the non-Taliban area of Afghanistan, neighbouring countries, the non-contiguous comparison area of Myanmar (Burma), and, the rest of the world. Alternative possible causes of the reduction such as drought, migration or changes in global opium markets are reviewed and excluded. It is concluded that the reduction in Afghan poppy cultivation was due to the enforcement action by the Taliban. Globally, the net result of the intervention produced an estimated 35% reduction in poppy cultivation and a 65% reduction in the potential illicit heroin supply from harvests in 2001. Though Afghan poppy growing returned to previous levels after the fall of the Taliban government, this may have been the most effective drug control action of modern times.

quote:

On 27 July 2000, the Taleban authorities banned the cultivation of opium poppy for the next planting season throughout all areas under their control. Since the start of planting season in October 2000, there were reports that the ban is being implemented seriously and farmers were refraining from cultivation of opium poppy 1. Fields that normally would be planted with poppy seed were instead planting wheat and vegetables. Furthermore, there was strong evidence that the Taleban authorities were taking stringent measures to enforce the ban. However, with the absence of any hard evidence about the effectiveness of the ban, many in the international community were sceptical that it would succeed...The conclusion of the Pre-assessment Survey was that the ban had been effective. The amount of poppy observed in all villages surveyed was 27 Ha. The preliminary estimate was that there would be a reduction of 70,000 Ha in total poppy area for Afghanistan. There were no exceptions to the ban. In areas where poppy had been planted, violators were arrested and imprisoned for several days and then released with the commitment that they would destroy their plantings

Here's the graph of Opium Production from the 2001 UN report.

As for conscription? Oof, my dad narrowly missed out on being sent to Vietnam, as Australia held a "Birthday lottery ballot"; if your birthday was called, you had to report for conscription aka National Service with the Army, or be jailed. One of my Dad's classmates went to Vietnam after his birthday was called in the ballot, and was killed there. "All the Way with LBJ" was the political cry here of the ruling Australian Liberal Party in the 1960s. Despite the Army's & Australian public's reluctance to send Nashos aka National Servicemen overseas to fight in Vietnam but keep them for domestic use, the government insisted on it. For non-Australians, the Liberal Party here are strong conservatives, who only call themselves as they claim to be "socially liberal, economically conservative, so we're really just like the 19th Century European Liberals, hence our name". In practice they're just conservatives & admirers of the US Republican party: their political corruption & illegal donations to Iraq in the 1990s & early 2000s helped bring Australia into supporting the Iraq invasion, but I digress. If the US actually goes through with conscription, no matter how dumb or ill suited it is, Australia & the Australian Liberal Party won't be far behind either :gbsmith:

# ? Feb 17, 2024 08:11

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

lol so rather than offering anyone anything, their big plan is naked coercion?

The lack of self awareness, particularly " the absence of any sense of shared obligation to fellow-citizens that the post-Nixonian military recruitment system has fostered. " is wild.

Yeah, there's zero apparent awareness of the fact that you can't do conscription in a society where the official ideology is that it's every man for himself and the state owes you nothing. There has to be some sort of shared aspiration to a cause beyond the individual and we've given up on that in the West.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 09:55

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

For a draft to not explode the country it would need to be some kind of fake graft poo poo. Like any kind of job gets you a deferment otherwise you can get called up and sent to combat the Information War (actually fighting a real war requires a lot of industrial poo poo we don�t have). You spend your draft working a lovely office job under a subcontractor for fed min wage flagging social media posts or something.

US can boast about its millions of twenty first century information warriors making its military by far the largest in the world. New American Century assured

# ? Feb 17, 2024 11:42

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

The monkey's paw curls.

Any draftee that doesn't want to fight will instead be working in the asbestos coal uranium mines for 5 years. No medical excemptions.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 11:56

DickParasite: Dec 2, 2004; Slippery Tilde

Pistol_Pete posted:

Yeah, there's zero apparent awareness of the fact that you can't do conscription in a society where the official ideology is that it's every man for himself and the state owes you nothing. There has to be some sort of shared aspiration to a cause beyond the individual and we've given up on that in the West.

You can do it it'll just lead to a lot of Niedermeyers getting fragged.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 12:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Hey FF I wanted to a follow-up on Bidwell's "Fire-Power"

I got through chapter 5 this afternoon, and I came across this passage:

quote:

Fortunately, the CRA of the 9th (Scottish) Division, Brigadier-General H. H. Tudor, one of the leading artillery tacticians, proposed a fully predicted fire plan, without any preliminary bombardment or even a preliminary registration of targets. Even the counter-battery programme was to be predicted. The enemy batteries were not to be destroyed but their fire suppressed or neutralised.

Surprise was complete. The Hindenburg position on the front of Third Army was penetrated to a depth of six miles. Resistance virtually collapsed in some places before the tanks arrived, because of the shock of the accurate artillery fire. In others, �tank panic� caused mass surrenders.

does the book ever get into an explanation of how you do a "fully predicted fire plan, without ... even a preliminary registration of targets"?

if it doesn't, would you mind explaining or pointing me towards some books that might? I find the idea fascinating

[as an aside, I'd heard about "Breakthrough" Bruchmuller many years ago when I was reading about the Eastern front of WWI, and it's cool to find that the Brits not only had their own artillery experts, but that their methods of achieving breakthrough differed qualitatively from Bruchmuller's]

# ? Feb 17, 2024 13:45

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Thought some thread regulars might enjoy this

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-military-police-wont-charge-sex-worker-for-allegedly-wearing-uniforms

quote:

Police had threatened in December to charge Kingston-area sex worker Christina Lea Gilchrist, who offers discounts to Canadian soldiers for her services. They alleged Gilchrist broke the law with the “unlawful use of military uniforms,” citing photographs on her website in which she was shown wearing what appeared to be Canadian camouflage uniforms known as CADPAT.

Article content
Article content
In addition, senior leaders at CFB Kingston also warned troops to stay away from the woman, who described herself as “a military fetishist.”

But, in a new message to the 32-year-old Gilchrist, military police now say that they have concluded the investigation and that no charges would be laid. “I will remind you, CADPAT uniforms are accountable items, and, if you have any authentic uniforms in your possession, even if they were purchased from a surplus store or gifted to you, they should be returned to the Canadian Armed Forces,” Master Corporal Harrison Swinson of 2 Military Police Regiment, Kingston Detachment wrote in a Feb. 14 email.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 15:01

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

gradenko_2000 posted:

Hey FF I wanted to a follow-up on Bidwell's "Fire-Power"

I got through chapter 5 this afternoon, and I came across this passage:

does the book ever get into an explanation of how you do a "fully predicted fire plan, without ... even a preliminary registration of targets"?

if it doesn't, would you mind explaining or pointing me towards some books that might? I find the idea fascinating

[as an aside, I'd heard about "Breakthrough" Bruchmuller many years ago when I was reading about the Eastern front of WWI, and it's cool to find that the Brits not only had their own artillery experts, but that their methods of achieving breakthrough differed qualitatively from Bruchmuller's]

It really is a great book. Pgs 91 and 134 mention it, as you say, but yeah not a great explanation.

Pg 148 of Gunfire!: British Artillery in World War II gives a more in-depth explanation, with graph, but I can't scan it. Page 140 also says "sometimes the paperwork was as mentioned very challenging..." but I'll try to explain it:

Predicted Fire is the application of massive amount of paperwork. The idea is that you have large artillery staffs that crunch numbers to plot out where shells will land, rather than registering targets with spotting rounds or relying on observed fires to make corrections. Instead, you calculate all of the corrections that need to be made on a shell's flight, before it is fired. It's a combination of ballistics, meteorology, and mathematics. Calculating where shells were predicted to land in advance of opening fire allowed CW gunners to deliver accurate* and effective artillery fire without alerting the enemy to which targets were in the fire plan, thereby maintaining the element of surprise and maximizing the destructive potential of their opening salvos.

* In the graph on Pg 148 of Gunfire you can see the accuracy of predicted fire on CB targets during the Rhine crossings. 5.1% of rounds landed within 100m CEP. That was still more than enough to suppress the German batteries.

At the heart of Predicted Fire is ballistics. CW artillery officers needed to account for a myriad of factors that influenced a shell's flight path, from the resistance it encountered in the air to the gravitational pull that drew it towards the earth, as well as spin drift and the Earth's rotation. Each of these elements needed to be calculated (reasonably) correctly to predict where a shell would land.

The trajectory of an artillery shell was also at the mercy of the weather. Artillery units relied on detailed weather reports, noting the speed and direction of the wind at various altitudes, the temperature and pressure of the air, and its humidity levels. These variables could drastically alter a shell's path, and accurate weather data was indispensable for adjusting firing parameters to ensure that shells hit their intended targets. We still have Meteorological sections today, though they don't work nearly as hard as the technology has gotten much, much better.

The calculations required to integrate all these variables were complex, especially during the Great War, before mechanical computing. CW artillery officers used tables and, in some cases in the Second World War, early mechanical computing devices to derive the correct angles and charges needed for effective fire. This process was supported by precise surveying and mapping techniques that pinpointed the locations of both the guns and the target. This is why we have the Recce/Survey sections, though again, they don't work nearly as hard in the era of GPS and INS.

There is an incredibly in depth explanation, with full-page glossy maps in the two volumes of The Development of Artillery Tactics and Equipment by BGen A.L. Pemberton.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 15:13

Cao Ni Ma: May 25, 2010

FF for fucks sake log off from your sockpuppet

# ? Feb 17, 2024 15:17

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Thank you! I suspected that it might be "they do all the math beforehand, which would have been a huge deal before computers" but I didn't want to speculate blindly

I do have access to Gunfire! so I guess that's going on the list too

# ? Feb 17, 2024 15:31

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

Cao Ni Ma posted:

FF for fucks sake log off from your sockpuppet

I'm trying to keep a low profile in the IP thread.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 15:38

ram dass in hell: Dec 29, 2019

Cao Ni Ma posted:

FF for fucks sake log off from your sockpuppet

Predicted Post is the application of massive amount of paperwork. The idea is that you have large troll staffs that crunch numbers to plot out where reports will land, rather than registering targets with snipes or relying on emptyquotes to make corrections. Instead, you calculate all of the reports that need to be made on a comment's content, before it is posted. It's a combination of trolling, sociology, and behaviorism. Calculating where posts were predicted to

# ? Feb 17, 2024 16:37

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

opsec absolutely in tatters around here

# ? Feb 17, 2024 16:41

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

I don't have Fly Molo levels of motivation to use an onion to VPN my Rexall prepaid visa or whatever. Changing AIS is all I'm capable of.

# ? Feb 17, 2024 16:45

HouseofSuren: Feb 5, 2024; by Pragmatica

It's going to be dangerous just being Jewish in the US or Europe in the near future, not religiously, just by existing. We are coming to one of those history doesn't repeat but often rhymes periods. Money is quickly becoming irrelevant for overall safety, ask the Saudi prince sleeping on an artificial lake to escape Iranian assassins.

HouseofSuren has issued a correction as of 18:57 on Feb 17, 2024

# ? Feb 17, 2024 18:54