gradenko_2000 posted:

mlmp08 posted:

https://twitter.com/n4ssie/status/1618307784252194817?s=46&t=sMsQRQVkJDZJV9FTpCGYHg

mawarannahr posted:

let’s capitalize https://twitter.com/usambkyiv/status/1620467679709777920

e: rare putin/ king in reply?

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

this is the only thread that acknowledges there are no good guys

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1631734771968618496

hes right were clearly winning this one

Al-Saqr posted:

isnt 2-3 magazines standard issue for a russian infantryman with an AK

Not So Fast posted:

https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1648036873179131907?t=obLZ5IvSXuTHy5FAH49WsQ&s=19

Is it... supposed to do that?

Slavvy posted:

Not only for they do this with t34's all the time, they had a bunch of vehicles that were based on captured stuff. Even in the kampfgruppe in the OP there are a few hetzer TD's which consisted of an obsolete Czech pz38t with the top half removed and replaced by a sloped box with a German AT gun. They used captured french Renault tanks extensively in the early war. They had countless different suboptimal, jury rigged TD's and flak platforms built on whatever tracked chassis they could get their hands on, they also used captured trucks as much as they could. The close combat series often gives you this kind of stuff to play around with.

Frosted Flake posted:

I think they'll probably continue to use light infantry in pickups and (at best) humvees and MRAPs to "overwhelm" Russian recce and FOO (by giving them too many targets to engage), Russia will fall back either if they don't have the forces to cover all of the ground or if they're forced to go toe to toe with numerically superior Ukrainian units that are willing to bear appalling casualties, and the resulting successes will be heralded as a great Ukrainian victory. Ukraine has been screening their decent combat units with TDF and half-trained conscripts who soak up Russian fires a while now, they'll throw them into the mix to keep the tank units from bearing any shocks too sharp. Since Russian forces have not shown a willingness to brawl like at Prokhorovka because of the casualties they'd take, and assuming we're still operating under the SMO, I'm assuming they will get out of the way and trade space for casualties.

As long as Ukraine is willing and able to take those losses and Russia isn't, Ukraine wins on a tactical/operational level by being the force remaining on the field at the end of the day.
That could change, maybe the Russian public (and politicians) will accept that they will have to fight it out on the level of An Lcc or Ban Me Thuot, but until then, if there are more Ukrainians present in a given area than Russian fires alone can dissipate, I'm assuming the Russians will pull back.

Danann posted:

_{(from t.me/DDGeopolitics/70636, via tgsa)}

A bunch of other governors and generals also declared for Putin too so unless that convoy going up Voronezh achieves something, may as well stick a fork in the mutiny/coup attempt.

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1672583666935971842?t=qbJeNahu-zfZ8hvJRiFDzA&s=19

uber_stoat posted:

China will grow larger.

Neurolimal posted:

So the end result appears to be:

- No MOD changes
- Pringles is exiled to a farm in Belarus
- Wagner gets nationalized anyways
- Wagner mercs who participated in the coup are fired (no charges though)

Seems like Prigo lost out on all fronts beyond "the guys who downed sone choppers aren't going to jail". Makes me assume Lukashenko's 'negotiations' were "if you march on moscow the Belarusian army will sandwich you".

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1673280634121338880?cxt=HHwWgIC-5eH317guAAAA

Communist Thoughts posted:

Historically a long grinding battle of attrition tends to be harder to stomach for the invaders right?

So the Russians need a breakthrough as much as the Ukrainians do. America is probably happy for this to go on as long as possible as a new stimulus for the MIC and proxy war to gently caress up russia.
Even if it ends they can just fund Ukrainian guerillas for years

It kinda seems like this was all a really loving stupid idea on putins part

Orange Devil posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

There’s another book about how the Second World War was won by the Empire, not the UK, particularly after all of the defeats in the first years of the war. They needed Australia, India, Canada, South Africa and the King’s African Rifles to fight the war. Falaise, Florence, Bologna, the Rhine, Seikpyu, Letse, Imphal and Kohima were Commonwealth victories, not British.

They had one shining moment to keep the Empire, Britains’s global status, Tankbuster would say probably not India at that point, but at least a greater Commonwealth, their economic power, and… well, they decided to do whatever the hell they’ve done since 1956 instead.

I suppose this is what they wanted, but their spiteful “decolonization” in the 1960’s, which alienated Canada too, remember, seemed more about keeping West Indians and, Indian Indians, from moving to the UK rather than a desire to do right by the people that had saved England.



In conclusion, I don’t understand Britain.

Frosted Flake posted:

I actually have the components list around here but I would have to check to see if it's cleared for public release. The GPS unit fails 25-50% of the time. I don't know how all of the electronics compare to civilian analogues.

Cao Ni Ma posted:

Sheepishly asks his german NATO trainers how I could go around the russian mine fields that cover miles

Ardennes posted:

Admittedly, the Ukrainians have taken positions usually by rushing infantry afterwards in waves until they get a foothold and then the Russians move to the next trench line and hammer what the Ukrainians send over until the process starts over. The Ukrainians do gradually improve their positions but they use up entirely brigades to move up 500 meters.

The Russians are fine with this because the Ukrainians aren’t really threatening anything serious strategic and they know they have far more trench lines.

Dokapon Findom posted:

I've always hated the phrase because it's the "lions" themselves implying they don't also suck and that bad leadership is the only thing holding them back, as if they wouldn't fail anyway or as if they aren't actually just donkeys led by other donkeys

Frosted Flake posted:

It’s described in The Psychology of Military Incompetence as Regulators and Rat-Catchers

According to him, the authoritarian officer joins the armed forces to make a virtue out of various personality disorders that make him particularly adaptable to military life. These problems can allegedly range from childhood scatology, through parental neglect, sexual repression, and virility self-doubts, to a need for the peer-group approval and promotion with which the peacetime armed services reward conformity. He draws self-esteem from the status imparted by his rank and uniform. He defers naturally to seniority and obeys orders to the letter, loves order and ceremony, is meticulous in attention to detail, and is often paranoid about cleanliness. He is strong in sequential reasoning processes, suppresses his imagination, rejects information that conflicts with his (and his seniors') preconceptions, and is fearful of using his initiative. He is often prudish, idealizes women (a state of mind assisted by unfamiliarity), shuns publicity, and seeks safety in secrecy. He keeps an unblotted copybook and thus gains unhindered advancement in peacetime. But he is easily disorientated by the crises and dilemmas of war and responds inappropriately or not at all.

Truga posted:

my dad used to drive a lada niva for forest work. smol car so it can easily fit on narrow forest roads, but has almost tractor-level torque when you need it, and can scale terrain far more expensive poo poo will have problems with

he abused it until it basically started falling apart after ~15 years and 150k km, most of them on terrible forest trails. it had its fair share of issues over the years, but it never failed to get back home under its own power

and it cost like $6k in the mid-90s. ladas are something else

SplitSoul posted:

No tank ever called me vatnik.

Frosted Flake posted:

Speaking of Poland, has anyone read (or heard of) Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944? It's part of the same project as Snyder and Applebaum, and was published as part of the push to create "Central Europe" for EU and NATO expansion, but it says the quiet part loud and takes things to their logical conclusions in a way that's still jaw dropping:

"Emphasizes that the Polish people, like the Jews, were victims of a German war of annihilation which nearly succeeded. While some Poles helped Jews, others helped the Germans to hunt them down. However, these were condemned by the Polish underground. Ch. 5 (pp. 121-151) argues that Polish failure to save the Jews was due not to antisemitism but rather to preoccupation with their own survival and lack of mutual social contacts. Contends that Polish antisemitism was mainly an expression of resentment against Jewish economic domination, matched by Jewish discrimination against Poles. Poles resented the Jewish welcome of the Soviets in 1939. Up to 1942, they believed that the Jews were relatively safe in the ghettos. Also denies "exaggerated" accusations of antisemitism in the Anders Army. Ch. 6 (pp. 152-181) describes actions of the government-in-exile on behalf of the Jews; denies that the Home Army failed to help the Warsaw ghetto fighters."

Comrade Koba posted:

i think that was a reference to the article that was circulated months ago where some news site or whatever it was published a gushing interview with a female drone operator who had a headset with cat ears and called herself "DeathKitty" or some cutesy bullshit like that, and who went on to brag about how good it felt to vaporize afghans because they were mean to women

Frosted Flake posted:

No western country has figured out how to recruit, retain or motivate soldiers so they’ve spent 30 years trying to invent ways to make do without them lol

Slavvy posted:

People aren't willing to die for a normal job. Their job is ultimately to die for the country. If there is no social contract then nobody wants to do this regardless of what the job is like in peacetime.

What I'm saying is it makes no difference if the job is nice or lovely, when it comes to the dying part all that matters is how much you give a gently caress about your country and believe in whatever it's government is doing that's causing you to die.

Some Guy TT posted:

lol that people think im nuts for saying apocalypse now is a failed antiwar film because the only thing anyone remembers about it is that rise of the valkyries is a badass hoorah song and here your cos managed to fetishize an even more absurd example

OctaMurk posted:

almost as bad as the people who watch starship troopers and dont realize its a satire lol

Slavvy posted:

Imo you're kind of describing the problem? More people die at taco bell until they suddenly don't, the fact that most people think it's a bullshit job is literally the problem as far as getting them to die for the country goes.

Frosted Flake posted:

Depending on when you went through training, your instructors were very likely "people too much of a liability to deploy to Bosnia/Afghanistan as NCOs".

Better a swing NCO on BMQ than a section commander somewhere where it matters.

Slavvy posted:

Lol

I don't disagree but I also can't see a division of US troops, however nice their trainers were, willingly marching to their deaths so that some other divisions somewhere else don't get encircled and annihilated or whatever. Especially in a real war when the chances of death are much higher than when you're fighting dirt farmers armed with sticks. The giving-a-gently caress just isn't there and that's a society thing more than a training thing.

You can also look at the number of Ukrainian troops willing to sashay straight into a minefield despite their training environment being questionable at best - for better or worse they believe they need to crush the ruscists.

Subvisual Haze posted:

The dumbest possible outcome would be the GOP shutting down the US government at the end of this month causing the money pipeline into Ukraine to stop and Ukraine to collapse. Biden admin would be secretly ecstatic to see the not only an end to the Ukraine quagmire, but also to be able to blame the loss on the GOP's treason.

Frosted Flake posted:

I think what people are pointing out is that there were not really other options if you take the view that war is the continuation of politics and all peaceful resolutions had been refused.

A path where Russia chooses not to go to war is one where they don’t feel they need to, but remember that no concessions have been made to them since this all began in the Orange Revolution.

Russia chose to wait and see, a pro-Russian party gained power via electoral means, and then there was another colour revolution - this time with Nazis.