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William Bear posted:More air defense systems going to Ukraine. This war has already been fascinatingly ground-based with relatively few air assets, and I'm assuming this will keep the trend strong for at least one side,
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Oct 11, 2022 21:15
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Sometimes I really wonder what he thought he was going to be able to do, but with this nordstream stuff it just seems bafflingly irrational throughout. What was the play?
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Oct 12, 2022 20:24
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Dick Ripple posted:When they start pushing deep into the Donbass and come in contact with the local populace that has not been so Kiev friendly the last decade or so we will see if these tactics continue to work. Those local populaces, if I understand it correctly, will have had most of their conscriptable-age males wrangled up and chucked into meatgrinder fronts some time ago, and have experienced a number of other substantial issues which may otherwise impede the dual condition of "still there" and "still pro-russia"
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Oct 14, 2022 08:37
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NeatHeteroDude posted:Is there someone in the thread who's spent a lot of time looking at pro-Russia propaganda media that can explain why their influence on public opinion re: this war seems so... weak? People have already mentioned the different markets they started refocusing their attention on, but there was an additional reason why they scaled back on a lot of their propaganda movements in most democratic republics pretty fast: when it came time for rallying visible activism or commentary to support russia, it really, really, really sucked. It was completely insufficient to task, through a combination of the arguments it was expected to use to encourage cynical nonintervention and the mediocrity of the people and groups that were to rally to the cause. It competed terribly against early messaging successes of Ukraine plus a prompt and steady demonstration of russia being russia
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Oct 14, 2022 23:11
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The rational expectation of russia is that they might just be parking untrained conscripts in belarus as a 'buildup of forces' that forces Ukraine to divert its own reserves and rotated troops more heavily there, so as to indirectly benefit the other fronts by reducing what Ukraine can safely commit. This is russia, however, so stupid cruel idiot moves like "cannon fodder kyiv assault" are always on the table
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Oct 15, 2022 19:31
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Turds in magma posted:See also: the US in Afghanistan/Iraq. Even with another order of magnitude more firepower than Russia, against a country with an order of magnitude less firepower than Ukraine, it's a total poo poo show unless you commit yourself to full-on genocide. Exactly that, the individual ultimately going ahead with this invasion was completely convinced they could genocide/warcrime/police state their way to full control of the area
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Oct 26, 2022 02:38
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I have seen some videos of the remaining wagner types at work against the Ukranian military and it is very clear that whatever of their competence hasn't been annihilated is being purely squandered, and much of what's left of them doesn't appear formidable anyway. I think most of them are just getting dumped out wherever russia is trying to shore up their defense lines and expect them to perform miracles with whatever support exists, and it's all just the same mediocrity at work. I'm sure they're absolutely top-rate at the russian institutional specialty of warcrimes against civilians though.
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Oct 26, 2022 22:01
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ZombieLenin posted:My expectation is that damage control on USN vessels is literal orders of magnitude better than that on Russian naval vessels. My present understanding of it is that damage control on USN vessels (when not beset by extreme staff overextension issues, etc) is orders of magnitude better than the standard performance of an average national navy, which is itself guaranteed to be orders of magnitude better than the damage control of Russian vessels. The picture of the Moskva's operation prior to its destruction was phenomenally grim all around. Fire control equipment locked up to prevent theft, few of the advertised missile advertised systems operational, wedged open watertight doors, the detection system interfered with communication so it would have to be turned off for the ship to talk to anyone, most of the engines past their service date by over 10k hours and you could only run them with express permission of the admiral, otherwise the ship was crawling along at a fraction of its intended max speed, the generators were seemingly operating at random, indicator lights to the bridge were entirely hypothetical operations, and there were cooling issues and weird leaky circulation throughout. There was just an explosion, then the best that could happen is that a runner could be sent to the bridge to inform on that they seem to have exploded.
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Oct 31, 2022 01:11
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DancingMachine posted:It's honestly bizarre to me that everyone is treating the difference between "A Russian cruise missile targeting near the border went off course and landed in a random area across the border" and "A russian cruise missile targeting near the border caused an anti-air missile to miss and land across the border" as important and meaningful. The culpability and implications are exactly the same. The only difference would be if you really thought Russia deliberately targeted rural Poland for some reason, which no rational person believes. well the AP's big thing is "absolute statements of fact as much as is possible" so it would be meaningful to their reputation anyway even if you work with 'culpability is the same' they issue big apologies over more trivial stuff anyway, so it tracks with wording that potentially clancychats
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Nov 23, 2022 19:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Putin's endgame is play for time until he dies of old age or Trump takes back the white house. betting on the american political system shifting power back to the dumbest and worst version of ourselves by fiat is unfortunately an arguably useful play, depending on 2024 turnout
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Nov 25, 2022 04:17
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Hey, I'm hearing news that biden managed to get Brittney Griner freed from russia in a prisoner swap, supposedly in exchange for Viktor Bout
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Dec 8, 2022 15:47
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Is this a normal exchange? Unreasonable/good/bad? I recall Griner being somewhat a casualty of crappy circumstances in how she was captured. The arms trader in question is probably irrelevant as an arms trader now, because his networks and knowledge are already a decade out of date even before you count the massive disruption of both his sales base and his supply by the Ukraine invasion. So he gets out in "just" 12 years in exchange for getting Griner out instead of letting her rot for a decade herself, which I was desperately hoping was not going to happen.
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Dec 8, 2022 17:42
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Alchenar posted:e: Russia has spent the last ten years struggling to deal with the costs of a rapidly aging population and an economy that doesn't really work. Mass casualties and emigation in the weakest and most critical demographic point is potentially catastrophic in the long term. The wildly large "draftable age" group also probably ensured some degree of intensification in brain drain. Those with the means have just ... gotten out.
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Dec 14, 2022 15:49
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Samopsa posted:A Russian slow and steady approach with actually briefed troops supported by a proper logistical chain is probably capable of pushing to Kiev given time. It'll take a while, but if Russia commits and keeps pushing on multiple well supplied fronts, like southwards from Gomel & Chernobyl into Kiev and from Kursk & Belgrogrod into Kharkiv and Sumy while holding the line in the Donbas and pressuring them like they're doing now... It'll be very difficult for Ukraine to hold them. Even before the initial russian wave of disastrous losses and collapsed fronts, the assessment of whether or not russia was going to actually invade seemed to assess (largely in agreement among multiple intelligence communities) that they had no ability to take the country at their existing military capacity, and this fooled a number of them into concluding that russia would not because it would be patently irrational. The invasion was then largely concluded to be an irrational engagement. I haven't seen anything since that russia will have reversed the deficiencies in equipment, manpower, or competence necessary to truly make inroads.
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Dec 17, 2022 17:58
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AI art prompt: thumbs up made of fire
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Dec 20, 2022 18:26
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Knightsoul posted:All because we need to fight this crazy proxy war against Russia. Because if Ukraine falls, the whole West will be eaten by the evil russians....right? RIGHT?!? No, this was not the threat hung over the heads of western nations. The simple fact of the matter is that there was apparently a level of military aggression that russia could commit to that actually obligated a large amount of the world to action against them, and since that day they've continued to do things which keep that level of obligation mostly consistent and long-term (constant, breathtaking warcrimes, etc) russia also doesn't help things for themselves by making this about the easiest money ever spent to counter russia as a geopolitical rival
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Jan 12, 2023 10:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted: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. Probably only because recent events make it easier to retroactively provide cover justification for delivering on their MIC bribes.
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Jan 25, 2023 01:18
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sean10mm posted:Historically real life performance of Russian sabot rounds has uh not matched the paper specs very well. It's what you get for noob saibot. But seriously, its probably not much of a surprise. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 25, 2023 23:12
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ZombieLenin posted:DU is evil stuff, because as you point out, DU burns. So it's got a serious advantage as a penetrating round over Tungsten in as much as a Tungsten round penetration has a chance to not kill everyone in the vehicle him by either causing a ammunition cook-off or just burning everyone inside the vehicle to death. I was under the impression that most shaped charge style munitions designed to penetrate tank armor basically do it through burning metal injection anyway. I think when it comes to tank munitions deployed against tanks there's not going to be a lot of moral considerations about if it kills the tank crew more efficiently, just application considerations like 'it's cheaper and it blows up ammo better' I thought that the whole thing where aerosolized uranium from munition fires might have been poisoning people and were being reported by antiwar activists to be causing terrible birth defects and stuff might have changed that.
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Jan 26, 2023 18:40
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TK-42-1 posted:These are the same people that think blowing up some American cities will make the US cower in fear. As opposed to reality where Russia would become the newest American territory in a couple of months. This is probably one of the reasons why clancychat needs to stay contained. Nothing becomes a newly owned territory, because nobody wins MAD
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Jan 30, 2023 06:28
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Nenonen posted:Just heard from radio news that Zelensky says he will meet with Xi. It would be funny if they had a candid talk and Volodimir was able to pull just the right strings for Xi to start putting actual pressure on Putin. Not that I expect that to happen, but one can dream... The position China just took on the war felt entirely like moral fluff attached to "just cease hostilities bro" so it's not feeling the best to me as a backdrop for talks
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Feb 25, 2023 05:27
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It's interesting to see the development of CPAC in this regard, because it spent many years essentially being a representative trendsetter for the future of US conservatives, but it went in fully on the jackboot loyalist train and doesn't seem to have persevered in the switch to the republican authoritarian cold war. So where pro-russia conservatism goes from here I guess depends on if desantis co-opts it willingly, because then it's not a point of contention among any of the factions that matter.
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Mar 4, 2023 16:31
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WarpedLichen posted:Seems like the fighting and attrition isn't as lopsided towards the Ukrainians and there's fear of losing offensive potential from holding the city. For a place that's supposed to favor the defenders, that's not really a favorable sign. I still am not exactly sure what benefit holding Bakhmut has that made it worth throwing so much of russia's offensive capacity at it. Was it seriously just part of factions vying for putin's favor by delivering him a "win" on paper that they got drawn into having to have it? Or are there other more credible ideas about what happened? One of the things I picked up on from time to time was evidence that Ukranian troops were being rotated in and out of heavy fighting, keeping them relatively fresh compared to russian troops that would be pushed to exhaustion and unit elimination. Has there been anything showing that on the decline on Ukraine's side? I would be very worried if Bakhmut was being pressed into an "all in" situation on the Ukranian side without good reason.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:57
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I think the real loser of that inertia is wagner. It gets stuck having to provide the win, as part of the politics of it. Then, once stuck, it deals with poor supply from its own side, exhausts a lot of its utility to the kremlin. By the time it becomes a huge rift, they've potentially used so much of themselves up that it doesn't matter and that's that.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:05
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so if you had to bet on it, you feel like the lengths Ukraine was going to to hold out in that particular city had become or was going to become detrimental, and they were sticking it out because of irrational symbolic value of some kind, or really hoping to deny russia a symbolic win? I guess if I were in Ukraine's shoes, holding Bakhmut indefinitely would be too big a benefit, you wouldn't want to pass it up. potentially so strongly that it would be easy to miss when getting out is the better option
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Mar 6, 2023 18:22
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Icon Of Sin posted:Pretty sure anything AT is going to look similar-ish. Until there’s a breakthrough, that is This joke? it goes deep saratoga posted:Trench lines are so full of artillery shells and rockets fired by the tens of thousands that they're going to take decades to clean up. Drones dropping individual explosives one at a time hardly make any difference, and may actually be less damaging because they fall from a short distance and won't penetrate into the ground. I am starting to think back to the history of areas in modern day france which are still unoccupied due to catastrophic war damage/refuse and thinking about how much of ukraine will be similarly uninhabitable for lifetimes
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Mar 8, 2023 16:39
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Pope Hilarius II posted:I think you're conflating a couple of things - while WW1 was horrifying, most bombed-to-poo poo areas got rebuilt pretty quickly. The countryside's depopulation is what caused some communities to disappear, not the material war damage. It's true that farmers, rangers and builders still find unexploded bombs from that era though. It's also one of the reasons why, while the Belgian armed forces aren't particularly impressive, they are very good at de-mining. Well, in this case, I'm thinking of the 'zones rogues' that got assessed as unrecoverable after the war, defined in stark terms as nonviable for human life. while other zones with lesser designations did get cleaned and repopulated fairly quickly, the red zones were mostly just closed off and made off limits for any kind of occupation, farming, or even tree collection. I think they are far smaller in range than they used to be but the areas that were hit the worst (and still remain closed off) seem pretty bad.
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Mar 9, 2023 01:03
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quote:Uh, I think one thing to keep in mind here is that the prop is made of metal and the surrounding airframe is made of much weaker carbon fiber composite War in Ukraine: Jet fuel can't bend steel props, Debrateriorata
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Mar 16, 2023 16:22
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fatherboxx posted:Putin whatever, not likely to live to see Hague but Lvova-Belova immediately named is a great move, she is a monster and should not escape trial (and is a figure that is most likely to be given away if the deals would need to be made). I think it was probably a strategic move to move them up to prominence next to putin in this announcement, because it puts eyes and interest in their program of relocation and at least some of the nature of what exactly transpired (that we can even verify) because it's, frankly, horrible
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Mar 17, 2023 17:53
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jaete posted:This seems... bad? As I understand it, wouldn't putting nukes in Belarus be against the current treaties? they're just continually working on new red lines and provocations and coming up with ... you know, whatever. part sabre rattling, part brinkmanship.
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Mar 25, 2023 19:33
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Storkrasch posted:Not saying that a successful counter-offensive is guaranteed, but this December-March have looked a lot like April-August of last year. I'm not sure what the manpower and equipment situation is like on the Russian side, but Ukraine has more going for it than "throwing a bunch of tanks at the front". Or "Maybe there's some more convicts somewhere we can use"
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Mar 30, 2023 02:30
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an analogue for the US crowd is the similarity of the republican effort of labeling their opposition the "Democrat Party" instead of "The Democratic Party" Another part of what makes it circumstantially problematic is how it then gets used by supporters of russian nationalism in ways which eventually cause you to have to do things like moderate it out of a space, no matter the claims of oversensitivity
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Mar 30, 2023 02:49
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-detains-us-journalist-espionage-wall-street-journal-rcna77354 russia has detained wall street journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for "espionage in the interests of the American government," and "collecting information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the russian military-industrial complex" earlier had been an involved author on a story titled "russia’s economy is starting to come undone"
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Mar 30, 2023 10:06
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