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I was reading that Janes' analysis and was surprised that they shitted on missile defense. Deployment of 40 interceptors is only possible because ballistic missile defense hasn't been a priority since the fall of the USSR and, despite it's increasing technical feasibility, it's a red-headed stepchild in the Pentagon. The cost of the GMD program is something like $40 billion dollars by 2017, but, in comparison, that's a drop in the bucket to the $1.3 trillion dollars we've spent on the F-35 program, and we've gotten successful intercepts out of GMD and THAAD. Now would be the time to put missile defense as a top priority. It would neutralize the Russians' perennial threats of nuclear annihilation whenever someone considers countering something like Crimea takeover or using regular military in Donbass. Let the Russians spend to try to modernize their ballistic weapons to penetrate an upgraded missile defense network, it'll pull more money from their conventional military and bankrupt them faster. Imagine what would happen to their foreign policy if the Russians didn't have their nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be sitting on our hands with letting them bomb rebels and prop up Assad in Syria.
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Feb 27, 2016 23:56
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Vagon posted:As an outsider to the American right, what has Trump's talk/policy on Russia been? Kill them all or respect for another Stronk Man? Putin's read Trump like one of the Don's ghostwritten books and has already been stroking his ego. Like Bush before him, he knows a mark when he sees them and is already getting his retina implants that look like a soul whenever Trump looks into his eyes. Expect Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics to be sold out and reintegrated with Russia by 2020 under President Trump.
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Feb 28, 2016 06:29
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Well, this is not good at all. I was just Googling "Hellfires" to see if that length quote was accurate and the top story is about this from CNBC, sourced through Associated Press, so it looks like it's legit.
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Mar 14, 2016 00:01
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Libluini posted:Holy poo poo, Trump really is a secret Russian sleeper agent. Not just from that quote, but you can see that one of his foreign policy advisers is Carter Page, who is well-known in Moscow due to his work with the Russian oil industry. Also, Kellogg, formerly of CACI, and Schmitz, formerly of Blackwater(!), seem to come from the PMC fraternity that produced such wonders in Iraq like Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. It's like the worst loving people are attracted to Trump.
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Mar 23, 2016 07:17
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redscare posted:I don't think it's just peak bureaucracy. Nope, that's not concerning at all. Just in time for spring, too. Or spring offensive. 
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Mar 24, 2016 02:34
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:I'm not sure which is more alarming about this, the fact that Bryansk Oblast borders Ukraine, or that it borders Belarus. It's probably more worrisome for Ukrainians, since Kiev sits about half the distance from Minsk from the same border location. Also, Russian "volunteers" operated as far as 100 miles in the early parts of the Donbass conflict. It would be hard to ignore if a Russian offensive enters through Chernihiv, considering seizing the entire oblast would still put Russian artillery within firing range of Kiev.
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Mar 24, 2016 13:04
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Gantolandon posted:I remember an interview with a Catholic doctor who said she wouldn't terminate pregnancy of a woman with melanoma. She also wouldn't even tell her who else could do the abortion, nor would she inform her that in her state, pregnancy puts her life in serious danger. At this point it's not even about protecting the fetus, it's preventing the heathen for usurping the invisible sky wizard's right to determine who leaves and who dies. I would wonder how fast this poo poo would stand if there was a Zika outbreak in Poland.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:18
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Who's he reporting to, the Under-Secretary of the Department of the Circular File?
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Apr 8, 2016 03:44
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OddObserver posted:Well, neo-fascists seem like the fastest growing market segment in Europe these days, so the second category might just be soulless capitalists instead. I've joked that neo-folk who want to make a real splash and stand out from the rest should be emulating IS iconography instead of Nazis, because that poo poo's played out. And I still hold that opinion after the Paris attacks. In fact, the Paris attacks just made me double down on that belief. 
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Apr 30, 2016 08:35
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anilEhilated posted:Same excuse for invasion. Granted, it's the excuse and not a reason. It's why their hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing response when Turkey shot down their fighter-bomber was so delicious. It made exposed all this dickwaving and storytelling as posturing, especially when we find out that the Russia military doesn't even use their own GPS and uses Garmin handheld GPS for their expensive military aircraft because they can't afford anything but. Even them bringing out their anti-aircraft ship didn't do much, because the U.S. ended up just increasing their airstrikes.
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Apr 30, 2016 09:31
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This isn't the only adviser either. Carter Page on Trump's foreign policy team was another Donbass cheerleader caught parroting pro-Russian comments... Politico, March 21, 2016 posted:Carter Page, a former investment banker and global energy consultant who graduated from the Naval Academy, according to his online biography. In discursive online blog postings about foreign policy that invoke the likes of Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey and Rhonda Byrne's self-help bestseller "The Secret," Page has blamed the U.S. for "misguided and provocative actions" toward Russia — notable in light of Trump's friendly words for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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May 8, 2016 02:23
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A Pale Horse posted:Someone in Vilnius did a funny. A street mural of Putin-Trump modeled after the famous Hoenecker-Brezhnev panel from the East Side Gallery in Berlin. Apparently, Paul Manafort didn't just work for Putin, he had a hand in Viktor Yanukovych's political career, just to bring this whole thing full circle, since it was his dealings with Dmitry Firtash that helped Yanukovych defeat Yulia Tymoshenko. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ng_tyrants.html
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May 14, 2016 14:02
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kalstrams posted:That's General Shevchenko, chief of ground vehicle department at their MoD. The same guy who has been supervising the Armata project. The expression on the officer or general behind them is priceless.
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May 14, 2016 16:38
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Back Hack posted:Is really a surprise though? Considering 3 separate T-14s broke down several times during the rehearsal for their victory day parade, and one broke during the parade. WHAT?! I heard about the rehearsal breakdowns but one broke down during a public demonstration?! How does Shevchenko still have a job?
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May 14, 2016 17:37
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Palpek posted:I am honestly skeptical about anybody being arrested for espionage under the current paranoid government. I'm also skeptical that those Russian soldiers really died in a bus accident.
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May 19, 2016 17:41
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Torquemadras posted:Not that I expect Putin's Russia to admit any guilt whatsoever - but don't they have quite some time left, compared to other countries? I know both the USA and the Ukraine shot down civilian airliners on accident, and both ended up paying out to the victims (I think the US took 8 years to pay the families). In the unlikely event that Russia decides to pay ANYTHING, I guess it's gonna look similar and they won't accept legal responsibility while quietly paying money anyway. Qaddafi, who was revealed during the Libyan revolution to have supposedly order the Lockerbie bombing, did pay up at least $1.5 billion dollars in compensation for the victims while continuously denying that he had a part and sheltering the bombing suspects, just so he could get sanctions cleared.
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May 21, 2016 12:29
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DesperateDan posted:As early as the 2006 Lebanon war Israel had both paid and unpaid volunteer shill armies that were organised effectively into dogpiling comments with pre-prepared talking points using an instant messaging type program, I have no doubts similar programs are being operated in varying scales by most nations for pretty much every conflict now- I remember news articles about comment factories during the opening phases of conflict in Ukraine, it's probable Russia just learned to hush them up a little better. Serbia was famous for using online propaganda armies during the 1999 war. I believe they called there's the Thirteenth Floor, since it was located in a single building floor.
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May 22, 2016 00:02
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DrProsek posted:Is that dude posing for a photo with Russian militiamen and also claims he's a gonzo journalist? That's about as gonzo as a photo of you high-fiving Nixon. He's also about as objective a journalist as Pete Santelli.
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May 25, 2016 05:54
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If they were serious, they would have waited until Polanski was in Poland for a visit and do a surprise round-up. All you're doing is just keeping him in France.
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May 31, 2016 12:30
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Libluini posted:Man, and just recently I read a Spiegel-article claiming there were secret talks to reduce the sanctions on Russia. The talks weren't going anywhere, though. The Russian side never moved one inch from their position, so there was no way of creating a compromise the governments of France and Germany could live with. (Those two were directly mentioned, could be others were involved too, or I may have skimmed over some of the smaller, less important countries in the article.) They are likely counting on a Trump win to have America lift sanctions and extricate itself from European affairs.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:07
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Apparently Medvedev told an elderly pensioner there was "no more money" to pay pensions . In front of TV cameras. Russian social media has gone apeshit.
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Jun 9, 2016 18:25
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:In the GOP election thread the consensus was if Russia did steal that data (and the Russians naturally emphatically deny it), they wouldn't disclose it to anyone, but keep it for ??? Their own edification apparently. Considering how connected Trump is to the Kremlin (for instance, his campaign manager got Yanukovich to oust Timoshenko in Ukraine) and how badly they want someone other than Hilary to weaken NATO and the sanctions, they would definitely be sharing that information.
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Jun 14, 2016 23:03
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Looking forward to Russia's upcoming "Eurasian Games" with the only competition coming from second-rater athletes from Belarus and Kazakhstan and probably some Chinese folks that are looking for a vacation.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:33
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Cat Mattress posted:So Oliver Stone is making a movie to reveal that the Maidan upraising of Ukraine was staged by the CIA to put in power a bunch of homonazis and that only Putin's manly arms are defending freedom and civilization. Wake up, sheeple! Someone needs to ask Stone what he thinks of Carter Page's work, both in getting Yanukovich elected in Ukraine and his work with Donald Trump in this campaign season.
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Jun 21, 2016 02:43
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Belarus missed out on the chance to one-up Transnistria's poker chip economy.
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Jun 23, 2016 20:51
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Palpek posted:Also there's a reason why Norway gets special treatment from the EU - it's a combination of having oil and at the same time not being a large enough economy to throw their weight around. UK's position is different. If Scotland gets it way, UK won't even have the oil to throw around. Pretty much most of the North Sea reserve is inside Scotland's exclusive economic zone. BP will probably have to renegotiate with the Scots for access and I'm guessing British fishing industry will tank as well. Somaen posted:So who is going to do the poo poo jobs at british factories/warehouses/farms if they send us back our lumpenproles I'm guessing when Tories cut the dole and the NHS to ribbons, former pensioners who voted for this poo poo. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 20:15
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A Pale Horse posted:Here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/great-brexit-betrayal-vote-leave-8288667 That's a pretty good breakdown because most of the renegging on Leave promises is happening on TV, like the Nigel Farage talking about no guarantees of the dues going to NHS happening on Good Morning Britain the day after the vote, and the Tory MP and Leave proponent rolling back from immigration happening on Newsnight last night. It's not getting buried in the newspapers, it's happening in front of a broadcast audience.
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Jun 28, 2016 08:40
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chitoryu12 posted:Is that a hole in the rocket? Normally that means it was deactivated. I was looking at photos of the OG-7V on GIS, and I don't think that's a hole, I believe that's like a screw connecting the warhead to the booster motor. If you look on this Czech poster for the PG-7V, it's listed as parts 8/Connecting Screw and 9/Washer  I do think it's presumptuous to say that it hasn't been exported, since I've seen these things in photos from Iraq. But we do know that the Donetsk and Lugansk received large shipments of these from the Russians, some that have been captured by Ukrainian authorities  http://lugansk-news.com/tag/og-7v-fragmentation-grenade/
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Jun 29, 2016 04:00
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Pluskut Tukker posted:A bunch of people who really hate the EU, and seized on the treaty with Ukraine as the first possible opportunity to express their feelings. For the vast majority of people, the referendum never was about Ukraine (also only barely more than 30% of voters showed up - the vast majority of Dutchmen couldn't care less). Of course, bring it Ukraine up in relation that just makes the Dutch look like big loving cowards considering Russia murdered 300 of their countrypeople.
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Jul 2, 2016 20:15
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kalstrams posted:When it launched it was RT-esque garbage, and still is. Yeah, RT and Sputnik are pretty much one and the same.
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Jul 9, 2016 16:40
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It sounds like their job prospects are nil anywhere they go. Even if they're old Mosfilm vets back when Ukrainian SSR was part of the Soviet Union, I don't see them really being any use in the modern film/TV production in Russia. I can't even see the pension in Russia being that much better. Sorry to hear about this, Baronjutter, that's a really tough place.
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Jul 9, 2016 23:49
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OddObserver posted:I think the idea is that it will make any conflict involve Western troops, which hopefully acts as a deterrent as it makes it less likely that the West will renege its NATO obligations. See, South Korea and the "tripwire" of U.S. Marines.
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Jul 10, 2016 17:01
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Deteriorata posted:Maybe that's why Russia wouldn't be so dumb as to invade a NATO state to begin with. The odds that NATO is actually bluffing is pretty low. They would have little to gain and a lot to lose by doing so. A lot of those prior reports of regarding the ease of which the Russian Army invading the Baltics also mentioned that Putin thinking he could get away with it after Georgia and Ukraine because the West is squeamish about getting into a nuclear war and that a conventional or hybrid invasion of the Baltic countries would be successful because NATO wouldn't drop that hammer and just deploy more sanctions. And if NATO did launch a counterinvasion, then Russia could threaten to deploy nukes. With a few NATO battalions being moved into the Baltics, Russia can't pull off something like the little green men in Crimea without major repercussions. Warbadger posted:The US has a few interceptors in Guam that might be able to shoot down an ICBM. If it flies over the Pacific. Aside from that it's all been geared toward shorter range/slower missiles like the ones used by Iran and North Korea. The Russians could lob ICBMs right over the proposed ABM site in Poland at the US (not that they would - those go over the pole) and the interceptors couldn't catch them. Kind of wrong. Not ICBMs but medium- and short-range ballistic missiles, like what a lot of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces is made up of, and cruise missiles is the stuff that Aegis Ballsitic Missile Defense (which is what is what has been put into operation in Romania and being proposed for Poland) as well as THAAD (as well as the Israeli Arrow, which shares a lot of tech with THAAD) are made and tested to take out. Since the only country that fields short- and medium-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads is Russia, it's less about degrading their nuclear deterrent and more about neutralizing their first strike capability. Ardennes posted:Basically, there is no way to shoot down their missile by the time they get to orbit, the Russian Federation is simply way too vast. The only thing we can do is try to shoot down the missile in space MIRV warheads "rain" over a target. However, the issue is that hitting a missile with a missile is hard enough as it is (and it is debatable if we can really do this reliably), it gets even harder when the Russians can add as many decoy as they can fit on a missile. There is basically no way for us to separate decoys from active warheads, and they would ultimately give us so many targets that trying to stop them any meaningful number of them is hopeless. The current goal of Ground-Based Mid-Course Defense is not to hit the warheads during the re-entry phase, but hit them right after their rockets burn out, since there's more time to track, make a decision, and launch an intercept. The Standard missiles are exoatmospheric. They've been used to knock out rogue satellites. The flight ceiling of the Block II is something like 1500km, higher than the apogee of an ICBM's trajectory. And don't think America is the only one whose doing this, Israel's incorporating this into the Arrow 3 and China is also has it's own mid-course missile defense. Ardennes posted:Basically, all missile defense adds up to is that we hope to catch a could real warheads before they get to their target but ultimately there is no way to destroy even a fraction of them. Missile defense really isn't worth the money and it is highly debatable why we were (and now are) putting launch sites in Eastern Europe, even if it is just to "stick it to the Russians." Also, the it doesn't really cost the Russians that much to re-design their warheads with more decoys (at least compared to what we are spending). TBF, Russia only has less than 300 ICBM launch vehicles, a third of which are mobile launchers. They do have quite a few tactical medium and short-range launchers, like a 100 Iskanders that can be fitted with nuclear warheads. But, you're wrong about redesigning warheads to fit more decoys. It's not cheap, especially with the budget getting slashed due to falling oil prices and sanctions. The Russians are already doing that with stuff like the Bulava and the Sarmat and the Rubezh, but have trouble getting them to work properly, production issues, overspending, and the like. Supposedly, they're to enter the field this year, but it's more like 2020 or so. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 03:38
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mobby_6kl posted:Had the coup succeeded, they'd claim it was a western homonazi plot and invade Eastern Turkey to "protect the local population". This still might happen even with the failure of the coup. If you haven't been following, Turkey just cut the power to İncirlik air base and Erdogan just indirectly threatened the U.S. with war.
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Jul 16, 2016 15:17
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skipThings posted:please source this, I need a laugh right now https://twitter.com/CNN/status/754312742455115776 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/754300816350216193 For clarification: Gulen's a guy whose living in exile in the United States. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jul 16, 2016 |
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Jul 16, 2016 15:41
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mobby_6kl posted:A video of the Sheremet assassination leaked out earlier today. Can't really see anything but yeah, his car goes boom Jesus. When someone said that attack was pretty self-contained, they weren't kidding. It took 5 seconds for that one guy to even turn around realize what was going on. There's one bystander who strolls completely off camera immediately after the explosion. I'm guessing that some folks thought it was a car accident at first and not a car bomb.
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Jul 20, 2016 21:51
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Ardennes posted:In some ways it is debatable, I think the Russian vision is actually quite clear which is to dominate the countries near it and their economies (Eursian Union)and to gradually tear the EU apart, an outcome which may eventually lead to an end of sanctions and an increase in bilateral trade with "friendly" European nations. To be fair, Russia was never going to join the EU, and Russia's alternative is a world where it has a significantly more political power and the rest of Europe is too divided to really stand up to it. To be fair, most Russians believe a weaker Russia is going to a less economically prosperous one. I think the other goal is to reduce the West and his competition to oligarchic autocracies, because it's easier to negotiate with or bribe a single leader like Erdogan or Trump than it is to deal with democratic voters, parties, representatives, factions, etc.
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Jul 21, 2016 20:23
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Rotacixe posted:What exactly prevents the larger force from being dispersed? Latvia. Seriously, the whole country is about the size of West Virginia. A T-90 can drive from the border to the coast in about less than 7 hours, or be in Riga within 3 hours. In the event of a Russian invasion Latvian army would likely have to pull a Romanian bridgehead maneuver that the Poles did during WW2 and evacuate in the face of superior numbers to a friendly country so they can continue to fight in exile.
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Jul 23, 2016 20:51
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Looks like it's becoming clearer and clearer that the Russians had something to do with the DNC leaks. The "Putin & Trump" conspiracy theory seems to be now entering the mainstream. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/
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Jul 26, 2016 22:52
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Palpek posted:Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman worked closely with Yanukovych before he fled the country to Russia. Carter Page, Trump's foreign policy advisor worked on a high position with Gazprom. A lawsuit revealed that some of Trump's buildings were founded with money coming from Russia. Fixed this for you, since I think it's important to have their names. Palpek posted:It all doesn't really matter though imo. This might as well all amount to nothing. What matters is Trump's stance on Russia and him openly stating that he won't honor NATO's pacts in case of a Russian invasion in EE. He also softened the Republicans' manifesto on their stance on the situation in Eastern Ukraine. It's all very beneficial to Russia whether he has actual ties or not and it's not surprising Russians would support him. Of course, neither are mutually exclusive. Alexander Dugin's been going around the United States, attending white seperatist meetings Oh and he endorsed Trump.
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Jul 27, 2016 15:13
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