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Feliday Melody posted:Imagine being an Iranian drone specialist, and you get deployed to Eastern Europe in November. Under the care of the Russian military. Ukraine said earlier that they had HIMARS'd some Russian military base and a couple dozen Iranian drone trainers were among the casualties. Not sure if that was confirmed though
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Oct 20, 2022 21:03
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Warbadger posted:The one they shot up with a helicopter and cannon fire on cell footage made a pretty huge boom, so *if* the ones ramming boats had similar payloads and *if* that payload went off right next to those ships when the camera footage cuts out there's pretty good odds those ships are seriously damaged. When the Moskva was hit there were various leaks fairly soon indicating that it's been seriously damaged. Nothing like that has apparently come out this time, one possible reason for that is that no serious damage was done. I mean, the Russian side seems to leak like a sieve when it comes to opsec so my guess (note: just a guess) is that nothing coming out of there means nothing much happened
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Oct 30, 2022 19:55
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boofhead posted:I assume if they're pretending to be part of the deal it means they have the capacity to slow it down way more from the inside than if they were on the outside making empty threats and having their bluffs called at speed I wonder how this will work in practice. Can the other participants in the deal just tell Russia no sorry we're fine, stay out of this please? I mean, it's pretty obvious that Russia is a bad faith actor through and through, so it's not like anything of value would be lost by excluding them
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Nov 2, 2022 14:31
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In NATO news, Turkey continues to block Finland and Sweden from NATO membership. Main NATO dude Stoltenberg has seemed less patient lately. Article in Foreign Policyquote:But Western officials also believe that Turkey’s cold feet are due as much to Russian economic influence as any purported concern over Kurdish separatists. Since the start of the war—and a wave of Western sanctions on Moscow—Turkey has often acted as an economic lifeline for Russia, increasing its purchases of Russian crude oil, pushing for more (and discounted) Russian gas, and moving forward multibillion-dollar plans for a Russian-made nuclear power plant. (There's a link to Financial Times article on Turkey-Russia economics recently but that's paywalled for me) Finnish news Yle writes (in Finnish) that Turkey is still asking Finland and especially Sweden to hand over some "terrorists". It's possible that Erdogan genuinely believes that our governments work in the same way as his, i.e. that the government can just decide to ignore laws and human rights treaties and decide to send people over. Of course it's actually the courts that decide things like this and they will follow the law. One Finnish tabloid has just published, with interesting timing, an interesting article (in Finnish) about the last time Finland decided to expel some people to a non-nice country. Namely, during the second world war some Jewish refugees were given over to Nazi Germany, when it was obvious to everyone that they would die horribly there. Eventually this stopped, but several such transportations occurred (dozens of Jewish people) before it became public after which the government was pressured enough to stop it. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have much info on this except in Finnish.
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Nov 7, 2022 00:18
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Finland does bring a good deal of value to the alliance since it’s so close to St. Petersburg, can monitor Murmansk and the northern fleet easily and it has a very decent military but if the choice is between it and turkey turkey wins easily. Sweden is also valuable as they have a surprisingly good weapons industry, and also a pretty decent army with which to safeguard the Baltic etc, but yeah Turkey would win the usefulness contest in that case too. As you say, the geography of Turkey is just a massive advantage e: I'm not too worried about the NATO expansion, Turkey will eventually yield (according to the expert estimates I've seen) and then it's no longer a competition, NATO can have both Turkey and the Nordics
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Nov 7, 2022 21:39
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Poland now calling it "Russian-made missile" Source: Guardian live blog quote:The Polish foreign ministry has said that a “Russian-made missile” was responsible for killing two people in the eastern village of Przewodów on Tuesday afternoon.
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Nov 16, 2022 00:30
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Tomn posted:Of course, actual NATO membership is probably pretty unlikely anyways given the complexities involved in securing membership for Ukraine so from that perspective it might be considered a "free win," but I wonder if Putin is going to regard checks on NATO expansion purely as a face-saving exercise, or if he's going to actively push for a peace agreement preventing "Western influence" from reaching Ukraine, for which read "foreign security guarantees and treaties that might prevent Russia from trying again in the future." I feel like the end of this war and the exact way it's going to end is so far right now and so unknown that discussing it necessarily borders on clancychat. Putin has driven himself so far into a corner with his ridiculous demands, his ridiculous predictions of the war's results and his apparent need for face-saving, while the Ukrainians rightly regard Putin as completely untrustworthy in every way, and so I don't know where or how any kind of negotiation would begin and end. What kind of event, or events, could force Putin to the negotiation table, actually in good faith? Sure the Russian army might eventually disintegrate or something, but that might take years and the topic is massively speculative. Or maybe Putin will die or be overthrown or something? Maybe, but clancychat. 
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Dec 4, 2022 19:19
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Young Freud posted:Would depend on the explosive used. My thought, given how it's believe to be a lucky artillery shot, could just be an improvised munition made from a mortar or artillery shell. Would help obscure the real cause. On Reddit someone is saying that it's an ordinary artillery shell but I have no idea how credible that assessment is. I agree it def doesn't look like a car bomb, and the people behave as if they're hearing incoming fire. Wouldn't artillery fire be a bigger boom though? Or would this be some airburst shrapnel thing? Or mortar? Other Russian collaborators have been killed earlier but that's been partisan action e.g. in Kherson with car bombs or just dozens of bullets from an assault rifle through a car windshield. If this is actual artillery fire then that would be a pretty different category. I wonder how this lady would warrant an operation like that to take her out e: Electric Wrigglies posted:Each side is firing thousands of rounds a day. Saying that it couldn't possibly be a random shell that missed an intended target because each shell is individually too valuable is a pretty wild assumption! I don't think Ukraine has been shelling civilians in cities very much though. Or are they just now shelling Donetsk in general? jaete fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2022 14:03
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Putin is apparently hinting that he might change the official nuclear doctrine to allow first use: https://apnews.com/article/putin-moscow-strikes-united-states-government-russia-95f1436d23b94fcbc05f1c2242472d5c Some pundit comments: “He doesn’t quite say we’re going to launch nuclear weapons, but he wants the dialogue in the U.S. and Europe to be, ’The longer this war goes on, the greater the threat of nuclear weapons might be used,’” Erath said.
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Dec 9, 2022 23:53
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Saladman posted:Like do Australia and New Zealand give a poo poo at all besides changing their Fb profile pics or whatever? I’ve literally never seen them mentioned in the context of Ukraine aid. Well, Australia has been giving aid to Ukraine if that's what you mean: https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1576662941641764865 In decent amounts too, according to Guardian article New Zealand I don't remember hearing much about but they're doing some training of Ukrainian soldiers in the UK it seems
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Dec 17, 2022 11:39
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Kavros posted:I haven't seen anything since that russia will have reversed the deficiencies in equipment, manpower, or competence necessary to truly make inroads. Well, at least for manpower, some people were saying that the mobilisation has actually helped quite significantly with that. Recently there were interviews with an Estonian colonel as well as with that artillery captain(?) dude from Ukraine and Zaluzhnyi the Ukrainian commander, all saying the same, that the mobilisation is a real thing, that despite all the problems and negative press Russia has also actually got a lot more soldiers onto the front in some kind of useful way. Of course they're also saying Russia cannot actually win in the long term and the whole thing is a shitshow. But Russian defeat might still take a very long time (Links to interviews, not sure if they were all posted in this thread: https://news.err.ee/1608815692/edf-intelligence-chief-russia-still-has-long-term-offensive-capabilities Zaluzhnyi interview by The Economist "Arty Green" Ukrainian artillery dude interview on YouTube)
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Dec 17, 2022 18:16
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Just Another Lurker posted:I thought that the attacks every two weeks was to let the Ukrainians do repairs and then have them all be destroyed all over again (to sap their morale & supplies), or was that just a conjecture by the media? Yeah I haven't heard much actual detail about the nature of these attacks. Knowing nothing about electricity networks for example, it seems that there's a limited number of... transformers or substations or whatever, and they're obviously not mobile and their locations cannot be kept secret, so you'd think Russia would be able to just bomb those things until enough of them are gone and the network collapses? But apparently that hasn't happened? Are the Ukrainians repairing the damage easily? Or are they able to protect all of the most important substations (or whatever) using SAMs like IRIS-T etc? Or have they built missile-proof fortifications? Or can one somehow build new transformers (or whatever) in a different location?
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Jan 2, 2023 13:33
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Cable Guy posted:That vid was posted a few days ago via twit either in this thread or the D&D one with the commentary that its capture enabled UA to listen in to RU comms for nine days. IIRC they were able to gather intelligence on movements (and possibly some artillery hits out of it too). Can't find the post though. The tweet is this I think,  might have some dead bodies: https://twitter.com/serhiyprytula/status/1615039030017523717Auto-translated text: "And this is the drone that you and I bought for the K2 unit, which takes away the weapon of the slain occupier. These bastards didn't reset the connection, so we listened to the secret conversations of the occupiers for another 9 days. And the more conversations there were, the fewer the occupiers became  )"
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Jan 18, 2023 09:42
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mlmp08 posted:But more that Germany is considered a reliable supplier, but a supplier who requires permission before you proliferate their weapons to countries or organizations they never agreed to arm. So if you are buying for your defense, fine. If you are buying and want to sell or transfer the weapons later, there are easier suppliers than buying from Germany. How exactly are these restrictive arms export contracts supposed to work in a region like Europe, which has about 50 different tiny states, several of which might apparently be invaded by fascists all of a sudden? All it takes is one of the major countries in the centre deciding to throw you to the night wolves and then you're boned? I guess, as always with European security, the only workable answer is NATO. If you're not in NATO, then you're not getting the good weapons (let alone Article 5)
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Jan 22, 2023 01:55
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Tbh I fully expected to have seen diverted weapons systems from Ukraine turning up all over the place and it's wild to me that so little of it has happened. Normally weapons just get around. I saw some tweets that weapons smuggling is indeed happening, but in Russia. Couldn't find very reliable sources about it just now though but people were saying various random criminals in Russia now have much easier access to weapons, which seems plausible. That could be yet another way this war damages the Russian economy and society
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Jan 28, 2023 12:14
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Ynglaur posted:30mm to 50mm autocannons are likely going to be the solution at the tactical unit level for low'flying, slow UACs like quadcopters. Hm, I thought these anti-drone cannons always need a radar anyway, to actually hit the target? The German Gepard apparently has even two radars. I'm not sure about the ammo but I thought some kind of programmable(?) airburst ammo would usually be used, not sure what you mean by "large enough dime"
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Jan 28, 2023 14:45
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Slashrat posted:I get the impression that these days, for the smaller european nations at least, conscription is more about keeping the Basic Training pipeline continually active rather than getting actual labor out of the conscripts. Labour... out of the conscripts?  Are you including, in "conscipts", the people who choose non-military service instead?Why would you ever get "labour" out of the literal conscripts i.e. the youngsters in the barracks learning how to shoot guns and march in formation? The whole point of those is the basic training
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Feb 1, 2023 14:47
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Djarum posted:Also the sub launched Kalibrs have the range to hit Western Ukraine from Baltic which they have used before but who knows how many they have operational and available to use without harming their defenses and operations in other ways. Wait, what? You're not saying that Russia has actually been launching Kalibrs at Ukraine from the Baltic are you?  I don't remember hearing that kind of attack happening at all, and it seems if it did happen it would be a major (actual no-poo poo) escalation, since every nation between the Baltic and Ukraine is in NATO
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Feb 8, 2023 21:15
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NoiseAnnoys posted:basically yeah. it depends on your transliteration methods, like if you spell Достоевский - Dostoevskiy, Dostoevsky, Dostoevskiĭ. i don't know which one is in vogue at the moment because i have successfully burned away all the memories of forced russianist training i got in grad school. Hm, wouldn't a more accurate translitteration be Dostoyevski? Similar to how it is in Finnish (where "je" = english "ye" more or less, "jo" = "yo" (short o) and so on: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjodor_Dostojevski)
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Feb 24, 2023 19:33
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Cicero posted:In all seriousness, it seems unlikely Ukraine would be turning down training opportunities from western allies, if said allies are paying for the training. The ball is probably in Finland's court, they need to offer. Yeah I think Finland should do more. Some training would be good, not just materiel. Also with the materiel Finland doesn't officially comment on what they're giving, so it's hard to figure out how useful the aid is. For example, Finland has approx 100 Leopard 2A6 tanks and 139 2A4's (source: Wikipedia). Of the latter, probably half (I guess) could be donated to Ukraine without it being an issue. Whether it's an issue or not, more communication on the decision making here and also more openness would be nice.
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Feb 28, 2023 10:53
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Finland's parliament has done a final vote on NATO membership, which unsurprisingly passed 184 to 7 - almost the same numbers as a year ago when we were deciding whether to apply. Of the no votes, 6 were Left Alliance, which is a party that is half modern city liberals and half insane Stalinists (they have 16 reps, whose votes were 8 for, 6 against, 2 absent); and 1 no vote was an insane right-wing Putinist who was kicked out of the Basic Finns right-wing populist semi-racist party for being too racist. Horseshoe theory, more like horseshoe fact.  Link to article (in Finnish)Of course Turkey and Hungary still need to ratify. Hungary was supposed to have done it already but they're now saying it will be in end of March. Turkey remains to be seen but personally I suspect they'll ratify shortly after their big election which is in mid-May. Also I suspect Turkey will be fine with both Finland and Sweden in the end... here's hoping.
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Mar 1, 2023 14:15
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spankmeister posted:It's like the edge detection filter in photoshop, very simple and yet highly effective as you can see. Yep, it seems to be "just" a combination of proper night vision and edge detection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-vision_device#Fusion_night_vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canny_edge_detector The latter link is a standard edge detection algorithm invented in 1986; no state of the art AI required. So the tech seems to be a clever combination of existing technologies, plus miniaturisation so that the computing power plus battery can fit on a helmet
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Mar 11, 2023 10:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Anyway let's game that out. Ukraine recaptures Donetsk. The only people left in it are the ones the Russians didn't kill. How do you hold a fair referendum there? What of the deported and the dead? Why would you hold a referendum? For what purpose? Those areas are Ukraine Content: yesterday Finnish prime minister Marin was visiting Kyiv and said that Finland could/might consider giving some of our F-18 Hornets to Ukraine (maybe one day, as we're replacing them with F-35s in a couple years). However now pretty much every other politician in Finland is saying wait, what the heck, you can't just randomly say that, we haven't discussed anything like that with anyone (would have to ask USA for permission to re-export the jets, might want to coordinate with them re parts and maintenance as well). Article (in Finnish) Anyway it seems Marin was simply replying to a reporter who directly asked about F-18s for Ukraine, rather than Marin herself bringing it up, so perhaps the whole thing is not that meaningful. I'm kinda hoping it will prod the international discussion forwards a bit though
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Mar 11, 2023 16:52
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cinci zoo sniper posted:This is very interesting, as Dzhankoi is supposed to be a fairly pampered military installation. And since it's at least 160 km away from the frontline, so yeah, it's got to be something new falling. A few weeks ago there was news of Ukraine doing strikes deep into Russian territory with, probably, some kind of Shahed-like drone system. Old tweets re same (maybe posted already back then): https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1631380205863313428 https://twitter.com/igornovikov/status/1631392124074590209 https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1630545767604670467 Definitely a notable thing if Ukraine now has reliable capability for deeper strikes like this. Even "only" 160 km could be a game changer
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Mar 20, 2023 22:40
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Reuters article: Russia has struck a deal with neighbouring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory, Tass news agency quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying on Saturday. This seems... bad? As I understand it, wouldn't putting nukes in Belarus be against the current treaties?
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Mar 25, 2023 19:16
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go play outside Skyler posted:another thing i heard on the radio today is that it marks the final nail in the coffin for any hope he might have of peacefully retiring his government. as soon as he loses his presidential immunity it will be game over for him, even within russia. Yeah I'm real far from an expert, but the ICC verdict seems to be more of a long-term thing, something that will further constrain Putin in the medium to long term, possibly in unpredictable ways, similar to how the sanctions are doing. Here's someone talking (on Quora) a bit more about the ICC indictment. I'm not sure if this guy is fully on the level, but he makes some interesting points: image/PR damage to Putin and his regime, which will probably discourage wealthy westerners from being pals with Putin; similar discouragement for Putin's underlings, such as the (relatively low-level) lady who was also indicted and for whom this will be a much bigger problem than for Putin; also discouragement for countries like Serbia in the diplomatic/political sense; etc. It all adds up. Semi-related, here's an interview with one of Putin's former speechwriters, with some more thoughts about Putin's future. While a lot of this is speculative, this guy is also fairly pessimistic overall about how Putin is doing with the war and the domestic audience, including all the (potentially) powerful wealthy businessmen and oligarchs. Well to be fair, he also predicts Medvedev might (again) be Putin's designated successor. So maybe he's completely full of poo poo.
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Mar 28, 2023 22:31
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buglord posted:So do security guarantees mean US soldiers, equipment, both, something else? And do these guarantees have a listed end date or just until the US cancels it? This is a good question, I don't actually know for sure but the impression I have was that it's basically just Biden & whoever the UK prime minister was that week saying "we've got you covered, don't worry" - the idea being that this will probably be enough by itself until NATO membership is validated (for both Finland & Sweden). I'm optimistic that it will be enough too... hopefully Sweden just has to wait until after Turkey's big election in mid-May (both parliament and president) and after that it's hopefully easier politically for Erdogan (or whoever) to just approve them
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Mar 31, 2023 00:23
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