My Spirit Otter posted:

I still want herman merman to explain this

bird food bathtub posted:

Do drone operators get pilot nicknames? Hope there's a good one from this.

Karate Bastard posted:

orange juche posted:

EMPs generate thousands of volts in metal objects and circuits and unlike a faraday cage most aren't nearly well grounded enough to dissipate the charge. Also the charge from an EMP is generated everywhere in the circuit, and modern electronics will burn out from a voltage of slightly over 1VDC through critical components like CPUs.

Older military cpus might use 3.3VDC or even 5VDC if they're old enough. They still will toast under thousands of volts from an EMP.

Ionicpsycho posted:

Is that an A-10 repurposed into a ground based cannon?

Dein Specht posted:

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1682340021397868545

Fragrag posted:

I can't wait till I have select images with BRDMs on CAPTCHAs

Borscht posted:

Very cool that the saboteurs excavated the entire pope, wiped it down, then hit it once with a shovel, too.

psydude posted:

Get your money for dacha and your duds for free.

Akratic Method posted:

Time to relax? Time for attacks.

BBC News posted:

The BBC has seen evidence of several cases in which foreigners were rushed into a military camp on the border with Ukraine, days after they were picked up for breaching immigration laws.

The practice of coercing people in pre-deportation detention centres to sign contracts for army service in Ukraine is not new, but the numbers swelled as foreign migrants arrived at Russia's 1,340-km (833-mile) border with Finland.

quote:

Among those appearing in court in Karelia was a Somali man in his 40s, who was arrested in mid-November, sentenced to a fine of 2,000 roubles (£17; €20) and detained pending deportation - a standard procedure for anyone without an appropriate visa.

Awad and at least a dozen other inmates held in the pre-deportation centre in Petrozavodsk, Karelia's capital, were approached by military representatives soon after their arrest and were offered "a job for the state". They were promised good pay, medical care and permission to stay in Russia on completing a one-year army contract.

Awad is not his real name, but the BBC has confirmed his identity.

He had arrived in Russia in mid-July and went to neighbouring Belarus, trying for months to enter Poland. By early November, he said internet chat groups popular with asylum seekers were abuzz with news that the Russian border with Finland had become more accessible.

quote:

Awad told the BBC that he hired a taxi on 14 November and, along with another Somali migrant, was driven for several hours from St Petersburg to Lakhdenpokhya, a town in Karelia 30km from the Finnish border.
...
His case was typical. His month-long visa had run out in August and when the taxi was stopped by police for a check, he was arrested. Awad and a dozen other people were sentenced the next day and moved to the detention centre.

quote:

The documents offering a job which were presented by officials to the Somali and others were in Russian, which none of the group could understand. He and others assumed they would be given army-related work inside Russia, he said.

"We were not given the contract documents and [they] were not even shown properly. We asked [what the jobs will be] but they told us that it is simple and good," he told the BBC.

Fearing deportation to Somalia, where he said his life had been threatened several times by al-Shabab militants, he signed the offer, along with five other Somalis, five men from Arab countries and a Cuban national. They were put on a bus and were driven south.

quote:

Awad told BBC that his bus journey ended at the border with Ukraine, in a muddy military camp made of large tents.

That was when his group realised they were being sent to fight, he said: "We were told a contract year with training and options with good pay and care, but no Ukrainian borders and war. Everything we were told was a lie."

The BBC has again approached the Russian interior ministry for comment on allegations that foreign detainees are being offered army contracts in exchange for their release.

The foreigners at that point demanded that their contracts were annulled. Awad said officials at the camp threatened them with long prison sentences for breaching military laws, but later retreated, saying that the job offers would be cancelled and deportation procedures would resume.

Four men in the group had received letters confirming that, he said. The BBC has not seen those letters.

For now, they remain in the military camp. Awad said he had been told a "video session with a court" would be conducted soon, but was unable to provide details on what the hearing would be about.

He is adamant he has been duped into signing up to the Russian army, although his only defence is that he did not fully understand the offer made to him.

"I said no, because I don't know what I signed and it is not written in my language," he said. "I am an asylum seeker, not a soldier."

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

What is dead may never die

Cannon_Fodder posted:

Normal country with boiling turd pits.

tiaz posted:

budgetary considerations reduced it to a conceptually similar but less ambitious program with less mass and velocity known as "Daggerfall".

Generation Internet posted:

It's unclear if it was actually inside the lake or just outside of it, but in Sevastapol at least Russia has absolutely been putting up nets and other conventional defenses.

...
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/12/russia-forced-to-adapt-to-ukraines-maritime-drone-warfare-in-black-sea

quote:

The first, and most visible, defense has been the addition physical barriers across harbor entrances. These are likely moderately effective at preventing Ukrainian USVs from penetrating the harbors, and are combined with machine guns and warships on sentry duty for a robust defense. Sevastopol has received multiple layers of nets, floating booms and even a chain of barges. Other harbors also, and most recently the Kerch Bridge. The latter was only added after Ukraine successfully damaged it with an explosive laden USV on July 17 2023.

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

It's mocking the GRU, which has a bat in place of the owl. The owl is a primary predator of the bat, and the HUR (the main Ukrainian intelligence directorate) apparently very much enjoy hunting GRU and FSB members.

Wikipedia posted:

Since 2016, the owl has been the symbol of the HUR (at the same time, the bat – a prey animal of the owls – is the symbol of the Spetsnaz GRU), the owl hovers over a map of the world and stabs a sword from the sky at a blackened Russia. The Russian Federation was outraged, calling this a provocation.

At first, the motto of the HUR was "Statehood, Professionalism, Decency", then from 2016 onwards the agency's motto is "The Wise will rule the Stars" (Latin: Sapiens Dominabitur Astris), an allusion to the motto of the hostile Spetsnaz GRU ("Only the stars are above us").

Stultus Maximus posted:

Don’t forget Cambodia.

psydude posted:

Did it actually do any substantial damage, though?

zone posted:

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1775074567590981673
Holy loving cringe.

The Door Frame posted:

We've been seeing a lot of WWI problems this war, so they're looking for WWI solutions


From the "official" snippets I've gotten about them, the stated purpose of the turtle tanks is to carry infantry, but Russia should still have a mountain of decent IFV's, so I don't buy it as anything other than paranoid drone protection. Spaced armor isn't the worst idea for dealing with top attacks, but they've traded their cope cages in for an entire cope house

Tomn posted:

Reading that translation, sure, it takes the murder of one crazy American to convince this guy that you know what, maybe invading Ukraine isn't worth it after all, maybe our hands aren't actually clean after all. Nevermind everything else, THIS is the breaking point here.

spankmeister posted:

Well yeah, that's why Ukraine is hitting their refineries. You can tell it's working when Russia has to import refined products from Belarus despite pumping up so much crude.

Besides, crude production is mostly out of reach in Siberia anyway.