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cinci zoo sniper posted:The mood with Russian journalists I follow is that this is a “cool story”. "Cool story" how? That's a phrase that can have five or six contradictory meanings.
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Oct 11, 2022 22:07
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Just wait until the workers go on break and then blow the bridge up.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:23
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cinci zoo sniper posted:The bridge repair tech who is a few missed salaries away from getting his home foreclosed on him is not going to take a moral stance on being offered to repair a bridge, that’s not really how real life works. Also, I would appreciate if you can refrain from using your alternative definitions of what counts as a civilian, or moralistic characterisation of words left unsaid, as far as your posting career in D&D is concerned. Do we even know the composition of the Russian bridge repair crews? Are they government guys, military, private contractors? Not that it changes my opinion that Ukraine should knock down that stupid bridge in the way that kills the least amount of people.
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Oct 12, 2022 23:56
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Nenonen posted:A civilian ship performing a military task under orders from the military leadership in an occupied area is not really a civilian ship. So sink it at a time when there's as few casualties as possible. This isn't that loving trolley problem.
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Oct 13, 2022 07:32
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My uninformed gut instinct is that this was a joint operation involving Ukraine and some bunch of ethnic/regional dissidents in Russia who were more than happy to cooperate.
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Oct 13, 2022 09:14
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steinrokkan posted:Shouldn't Ukraine have some Soviet Shilkas lying around? Those seen like they are an ideal match against crappy drones. Hell, wouldn't something even more old fashioned like, say, a 20mm Oerlikon AA gun work too?
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Oct 18, 2022 10:42
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Paladinus posted:They still seem to be better trained and equipped than regular Russian soldiers. That's a pretty goddamned low bar, given what we've seen being handed out to the mobiks.
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Nov 1, 2022 14:25
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Ynglaur posted:Yes, you're correct. The author's premise is that the BTG is vulnerable due to its task organization. For example, it really only has one command post; US battalions have two. The BTG has very little organic maintenance or vehicle recovery assets, so stringing it out along a long line of supply makes it vulnerable. BTGs carry little organic supply. Theoretically a Russian brigade or regiment would have these assets, but doctrinally they sit further to the rear. That makes more sense if you assume the front is only 10-12 km deep from the forward line of contact, and in fact can help you protect those assets. What we're seeing in Ukraine, though, is that assets are under threat of indirect fire 50km or more from the forward line of contact. So now the BTGs 1) have fewer support assets immediately available; and 2) they're no more protected than if they were more available. IIRC they're also extremely light on supporting infantry, which means they're vulnerable to the sort of ATGM ambush tactics the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be masters of.
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Nov 2, 2022 21:09
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Pook Good Mook posted:I love how Russians live in a visibly decaying corrupt failure of a country and then assume everyone else should be grateful to get their help. It very strongly reminds me of an old joke about the entertainment industry: Hedda Hopper posted:I liked this one about a man who’d been taking care of elephants in a circus 25 years. He fed, bedded them down, did everything, then the number of elephants was doubled. After a month of this he was in a state of exhaustion. His wife said to him, "Why not give it up and get another job that’s easier." He screamed, "What! And leave show business?"
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Nov 11, 2022 21:03
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OddObserver posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/azamatistan/status/1590846401675919360 In case you don't want to read the rest of this guy's thread on the dying birdsite, a brief precis is that Russia still believes in its own special version of "The White Man's Burden".
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Nov 11, 2022 21:07
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That's one hell of a salient they're making themselves in the northwest there.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:16
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Yeah, Russia's just decided they can dragoon foreigners into their military now. https://twitter.com/MrbamNews/status/1592165273280430083
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Nov 14, 2022 22:46
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Flappy Bert posted:Not that anything is deserved, but I’m a bit curious what a nuclear engineering student was serving a 9 year sentence for. Probably drugs while being African.
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Nov 14, 2022 23:03
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Paladinus posted:Not what it means at all. At least for now. Glad to hear that, actually.
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Nov 14, 2022 23:33
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My worthless prediction is that the most that will happen is that NATO will be basing more SAM batteries in Eastern Poland that might accidentally shoot down Russian missiles in Western Ukraine, and also NATO giving Ukraine more fancy gizmos.
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Nov 16, 2022 02:46
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:It's a similar sort of unfamiliarity with a foreign system that leads many westerners to naïvely wonder why don't the oligarchs just remove Putin or Xi, given that they're obviously bad for business? It's a problem called "mirror imaging" in strategic studies. We (we as humans, not us ITT specifically) tend to imagine our opponents as thinking and behaving in mostly the same way that we do despite this being very obviously not true. An example being the various commentators who said there was no way Russia would attack Ukraine because they didn't have the resources to win such a conflict.
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Nov 20, 2022 12:46
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cr0y posted:Using the conflict in Ukraine as a stress test on United States manufacturing isn't really a good test. The primary reason for that being in a hypothetical future conflict where the United States is directly involved we are not going to be relying on artillery/etc because step one is going to be overwhelming air superiority. Problem is in a future NATO-wide conflict the US is going to have act as an arsenal and munitions plant not just for its own armed forces but for other NATO militaries as well. The Ukraine conflict might not be a good stress test, but it's likely the only one we'll get.
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Dec 5, 2022 20:08
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Herstory Begins Now posted:tbf he recommended nuclear war against basically everything, that was pretty much his thing It was a lot of peoples' thing in the early '50s.
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Dec 15, 2022 07:23
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Moon Slayer posted:Least surprising Time person of the year probably in my lifetime, that's for sure. Also the first one in decades that doesn't feel forced or stupid or pandering.
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Dec 20, 2022 17:22
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Kchama posted:I'd be pretty shocked if there are many non-military folk on a military airbase. This wasn't a random civilian airport, but the military airbase that they've been launching missiles from at Ukraine's civilians. I can't speak for Russian airbases but there's always civilians living and working at American ones. You have family members/dependents of military personnel, civilian contractors employed at on-base shops and restaurants, other contractors working on aircraft or whatever, and others.
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Dec 27, 2022 10:46
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Kchama posted:As far as I know it's not nearly as much of a thing on Russian bases. Well, yeah, I agree totally it's a valid target. Hopefully it was pilots or aircraft ground crew that got got, not the janitorial staff.
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Dec 27, 2022 13:50
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Nenonen posted:lmao I wonder why they didn't make one for Truss/Rishi (it's totally understandable, Bozo did help Ukraine, but lol) Support for Ukraine the only thing BoJo ever got right in his life that didn't involve nepotism.
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Jan 8, 2023 00:35
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OctaMurk posted:why would you outsource your ammo production to a nation that constitutionally forbids providing ammos to nations in conflict, when conflict is the whole point of getting the ammo Because it's marginally cheaper to outsource that poo poo and besides, it's not as if there'll ever be a real war in Europe again, right?
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Jan 11, 2023 18:30
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If the target was tough enough the Brits would wheel out these motherfuckers which were the same caliber as those on the Queen Elizabeth class dreadnoughts, which were the pride of His Majesty's fleet. "I say, Brigadier, I'm in awe at the size of this lad. Absolute unit." Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 02:22
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Basically if a front line becomes static long enough it becomes a playground for really, really heavy artillery. Because if you can't shift the front using the guns you have right now, a bigger gun might just do the job. And I'm not sure what level of irony this is on, but Ukraine could probably get a lot of use out of a modern Heavy Gustav if they had one. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 07:03
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Mederlock posted:If the Germans are really held up by a lack of commitment of American tanks, before they'll give the blessing for the transfer of Leopard II's, what's the viability of throwing together an upgrade package on what's left of the M60 stock, pick up a bunch from the nations that the USA sold them to, and pushing those forward as an alternative to providing Abrams I'm not sure there is much if anything left of the M60 stock. Most of them were, last time I checked, dumped into the Gulf of Mexico for artificial reefs. Plus they've been out of US service for 30 years at this point so even if we had enough of them you'd have to call in a bunch of long-retired graybeards to instruct Ukrainians. It might actually be easier to get the DOD to cough up old M1s. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Jan 19, 2023 |
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Jan 19, 2023 13:33
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ZombieLenin posted:Being a person who works in civil service I consider it to be incredibly dubious that any Western government does not already know exactly both how many MBTs are in the national inventory and exactly how many of those are in an operable state. I'm a historian who works with government archives and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have piss poor records. I know at least one major military branch that doesn't have a complete catalog of their own archival material.
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Jan 21, 2023 17:10
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EasilyConfused posted:As an archivist, I'm amazed to hear that anyone claims to have a complete catalog of their own archival material. Yeah but almost all archives I've gone to have at least a skeletal catalog you can consult. This archive said "lol no  ". There's a filing system of sorts but it's staff use only and I have no idea if there's an actual register.
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Jan 22, 2023 00:20
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:There is a really interesting Perun vid that sort've goes into this subject offhandedly but its through talking about Poland's current and future weapons procurement instead: The projected in service date of the MGCS is 2035 according to the Wikipedia page, which also features repeated use of the term "glacial pace" regarding development.
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Jan 22, 2023 15:09
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Johnny Nomad posted:The US has been constantly making brand new Abrams since the 80s at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center, which used to be the Lima Army Tank Plant in Ohio. They make 10-12 a month. The army doesn't want or need them, but the government doesn't want to shut the plant down. One of the reasons the government has insisted on keeping Lima open is because once you close down the facility you lose the institutional of knowledge and experience necessary in building those tanks, and it would take shitloads of time and effort (and money) to restart production should, let's say, you ever need to suddenly provide M1s en masse to a not-quite-allied country being invaded by Russia. There's probably quite a few smug congresscritters who voted to keep that plant open today.
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Jan 24, 2023 23:41
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Knightsoul posted:Those are just lies...plain and simple. Brother can you spare a citation for any of this?
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Jan 28, 2023 02:48
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Fritz the Horse posted:fatherboxx has graciously agreed to IK this thread. Feel free to offer them your condolences. We may (hopefully) yet find a second IK. Tossing back a vodka in respect of our poor IK. "Будем здоровы!" Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Feb 1, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 04:44
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Does fatherboxx know he's an IK? It'd be bleakly thread-appropriate if he woke up and found himself with mod buttons.
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Feb 1, 2023 08:54
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The one with the buttons probates! When the one with the buttons gets banned, the one behind him takes the buttons and probates!
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Feb 1, 2023 09:10
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Fritz the Horse posted:I'm gonna be the fun police and suggest we not go overboard riffing on fatherboxx the IK, thanks. Fair. We have to conserve our riffs until Scholtz agrees to supply more.
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Feb 1, 2023 09:12
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So how many SAM launchers are the Secret Service going to incompetently leave behind in Kyiv when Air Force One departs? EDIT: I am being informed that Biden may have taken a train from Poland. 
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Feb 20, 2023 14:57
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Brown Moses posted:Navalny came out with a 15 point political platform, which includes recognising Ukraine’s 1991 borders (including Crimea), and reparations for Ukraine Hope he takes it easy on drinking tea after this.
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Feb 20, 2023 15:29
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khwarezm posted:Its pretty odd the way that these articles don't really give much weight to the notion that in the event that the West was creating some kind of Wile E. Coyote Acme trap to goad the Russians into invading Ukraine so they can drop an anvil on them, the surest way for the Russians to avoid such a dastardly plan is to... simply not invade. There's a strange "leftist" school of thought that states only America truly has agency in world politics and every other government essentially only ever reacts to American stimulus. It's not phrased this way but that's what, when you strip away all the cruft and phraseology and caveats, they're actually saying. The arguments you're talking about come from this school of thought.
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Feb 27, 2023 02:22
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cinci zoo sniper posted:While I'm not sure who Zeihan is, the most bullish claims even Ukrainian leadership is producing peak at 1:7 (Danilov, which means it's virtually guaranteed to be bullshit). He's basically a random talking head with no claim to special knowledge of the Ukraine war.
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Mar 7, 2023 10:56
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Atreiden posted:WTF would they be used for other than that, when we're talking things like air defense. There's quite a few uses for weapons in what are called "measures short of war". UN peacekeeping missions or protecting emergency relief forces are the ones that come most easily to mind. It's still an absolutely blockheaded statement by the Swiss president.
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Mar 14, 2023 00:02
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