Weka posted:

These dudes are apparently the biggest manufacturer of transformers in Europe and one of the 10 biggest in the world, so I guess that's a good thing for Ukraine's ability to repair their grid.

Frosted Flake posted:

Leandros posted:

Seems like an awful lot of damage for an AA warhead

January 6 Survivor posted:

FF if it makes you feel better if we were at a dinner party and you started talking about artillery I'd just listen

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

canadians might not be the "worst" anglos but they are by far the most annoying

The Voice of Labor posted:

still finding it hard to believe that bloody joseph "worse than hitler" would have the patience, in this one instance, to let his political enemies starve to death rather than just having them murdered outright. think his therapist was having him experiment in delaying gratification?

mlmp08 posted:

It’s a myth started by tactical bros or something. Even the most basic-rear end gauze or sterile cloth and sturdy tape would create better pressure and be more likely to save a life.

Frosted Flake posted:

e: Canada has a huge stockpile of Lee-Enfields the government is supposed to liquidate over the next two years, I look forward to the comments on twitter if they end up there.

Lostconfused posted:

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1597670324900073472

the bitcoin of weed posted:

so basically the soviets implemented a sort of affirmative action program in addition to promoting minority languages, specifically to counteract the opposite policy which had been part of the tsardom? and then stopped doing that because russians were getting mad for the same reason conservatives get mad at modern affirmative action programs, and because Stalin thought promoting ethnic nationalism weakened the Union as a whole? it seems insanely dishonest to frame this as the soviets specifically oppressing ukrainian culture and language lmao

mlmp08 posted:

Sounds hard, can’t do it. Now let’s go invade a country where this time, they’ll greet us as liberators, I swear, just gonna need 20+ years of “contingency” funding.

Frosted Flake posted:

Just to circle back to the Stasi/KGB/Securitate for a minute. Considering how much we know about the NSA and CSE monitoring all forms of our communication, railing on about the tyranny ot steaming open a few envelopes seems a bit absurd.

e: WRT BAOR logistics. I posted their estimates of lost personnel and equipment a while ago, but they expected 90% casualties within two weeks of hostilities opening on the North German Plain. Considering NATO expected a conflict to go nuclear if not resolved within the initial two weeks (if not earlier through use of battlefield weapons), stockpiling two weeks worth of munitions made sense within that narrowly defined context.

ee: That logistical planning became institutionalized and so in the Gulf War the US and UK forces - which deployed from Germany - rapidly expended their munitions as usage was at a much higher rate than expected. Similarly, US planners were astounded by ammunition expenditure during the Arab-Israeli Wars.

Everyone was planning for conventional war to be so intense and violent that no new forces would be trained and equipped before the conflict ended either through negotiation or strategic nuclear exchange. 4 CMBG, in NATO II Corps Reserve, was expected to be destroyed within 3 days of going into action, and the only other Canadian force earmarked for Europe, 5 CMBG was to deploy to Norway, where equipment was prepositioned. There was no expectation that either force would or could be reinforced before hostilities ended, and moreover the expectation was that the Port of Halifax would become unavailable some time after the Soviet Fleet broke into the Atlantic through the GIUK Gap.

Cuttlefush posted:

i'd like to see you try, punk

Slavvy posted:

How is that better than just using artillery or rockets though

Frosted Flake posted:

We’ve talked before about the state of Western Militaries, with the social contract being broken, erosion of benefits, stagnant pay, abuse and harassment and general low morale. The CAF is 10k pers short with no signs of that changing.

Well I want to point out that liberalism cannot offer solutions to the problems it creates. An article came out that I spent my entire day in meetings about with more to come: The Canadian Armed Forces are heading for a Titanic collapse

Now I want to preface that I agree with nearly all of the problems. The solutions, to turn the military into essentially a private sector corporate job with no tradition and esprit de corps, to me illustrate the alienating nature of liberalism. It’s not about inspiring belief or belonging or giving something soldiers to die for and instead trying to obfuscate that as much as possible and turn the military into a job - the implicit part is that no meaning can be expected from it, no duty or purpose, and in exchange the state will offer nothing more than a paycheque:

“Marching in lines, stamping feet on parade grounds and keeping with traditional uniforms – these should also be done away with. These rituals are simply not relevant to the citizens who must make up the force of the future; they reflect the reality that Canada’s military is stuck in the past.”

“Nobody wants to work in an old, tired organization that draws its culture and values from a museum; people want to be part of an agile organization that rewards modern values. The Canadian Armed Forces needs to abandon its sternward perspective on legacy force structure and missions – or it won’t be able to bail out the sinking ship.”

Without getting into the deep body of literature on the subject, close order drill, marching, uniforms, these all have a social purpose, and my theory here is that because liberalism doesn’t conceive of things socially but individually they see harebrained schemes like this as a solution to endemic problems instead of a further erosion of what soldiering means. Deep, felt, social, meaning is something disappearing from all areas of our society but again going back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, militaries need these things to function.

I’m curious what the feeling is here because people on the left have observed this cultural shift, with the officer corps becoming more like a corporate PMC and enlisted Operator Culture becoming more about individual advancement and a sort of professional athlete ethos. I get why the initial reaction from left leaning people is “who cares?” and “marching is dumb”, but my point is that if liberalisms alienating impulses and disconnection from social meaning have penetrated to something so essential as the functioning of the state - in preference to the basic social contract of improving material conditions: pay, benefits, housing, education, pensions, an end to workplace abuse - this line of thinking permeates all levels of decision making.

Frosted Flake posted:

They were complaining about paying money to train doctors who leave after their first hitch but doesn’t Canada have a shortage of doctors? Creating new doctors is so evidently a good thing the state should do for its own sake that I don’t get the complaint. Cost? What better thing could the military spend money on than creating new doctors? If they go into the provincial healthcare systems after their first stint, so much the better, because the military is benefiting society not just itself. Isn’t that national service?

Cuba figured this out.

Besides the value of continuously training doctors that spend time in the CAF and then go on to staff provincial hospitals, a military worth belonging to is what would encourage others to stay on as regimental surgeons. Whatever you define the national interest as, more doctors and nurses is defence spending that actually furthers it concretely, both in terms of a well staffed battlefield medicine system and “aid to the civil power”.

lollontee posted:

could we maybe tolerate the slightest bit of gore in our active combat related posting, if we mentally all decide it could to be braking fluid tho? like, i know some people do get unwell looking at a pubble that might've been a human once, but um...
THIS IS WAR BARNEY

lollontee posted:

i hope it was blood

Futanari Damacy posted:

All you Putin death watchers: stay tuned

gradenko_2000 posted:

If they abandon Odessa wouldn't that make it vulnerable to a push fron the Russians

GlassElephant posted:

If an actual conflict with NATO kicks off, NATO air capabilities have been completely untouched by the conflict in Ukraine (aside from sending some AGM-88s). Nobody is going to launch a ground campaign into Serbia.

Slavvy posted:

Fbw is literally just using a sensor and an actuator to replace physical control linkages, your car has it for the throttle and maybe the brakes and steering depending on what you've got.

I was unaware that inherent instability had become the norm in fighter jets, is that just more MIC grift in the hopes of somehow dodging supersonic a2a missiles?

Frosted Flake posted:

Just in time to protect the new electrical infrastructure no Canadians voted for

Seatbelts posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLapeSoCpCA
Whats this one?

Starsfan posted:

From what I read the western military strategists are concerned about a Russian push to divide Ukraine west of Kyiv but east of Lviv. You would pust almost directly south from Minsk and go through Zhytomyr and Vinnystia towards the border with Moldovia. I guess the idea would be to cut the support lines for the majority of Ukraine, where they get basically all of their supplies for their armies through eastern Poland. This sort of attack would strangle the country if successful and if the division of the country was maintained for a lengthy period of time.

The thing is that I can't really see this kind of unsupported attack (where you would potentially create a corridor surrounded on both sides by Ukrainians) succeeding unless the Ukrainian army is already effectively defeated prior to it kicking off. It seems too outrageous to even try, although I guess it's not that much different in principle than the convoy to Kyiv that eventually withdrew in more or less good order after realizing the city wasn't going to collapse.

trying to capture Kyiv again seems equally pointless and those armies in Belarus are building up for something or other so maybe we get to see.

Frosted Flake posted:

lol Christ. We’re just supposed to let this pass without comment eh?

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/KhersonFrom/status/1604048276885585921

Russia's been busy rebuilding Mariupol for whoever was wondering about it earlier.

crepeface posted:

are we allowed to quote things from the old thread because that time a gbs (?) poster sincerely claimed that 'at least the US helped rebuild afghanistan' was an all-timer.

thekeeshman posted:

How am I arguing in bad faith? What positions do you think I'm espousing that I don't really believe?

And lol that you blindly take a PR statement from someone in the Kremlin as evidence of anything. Your link doesn't even mention a monetary amount, such solid plans. Russia's been in control of large parts of Ukraine since 2014, how much aid and investment have they put into those regions? What makes you think things are going to be different this time?

But it's very funny to see that you think idle Russian musings are more real than the billions of dollars the US actually put into rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.

speng31b posted:

Seems the power situation keeps getting worse, reports are the latest strikes today may have included larger payloads capable of breaking through the concrete block structures Ukraine was using to protect transformers

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1604852924458209280

probably something to keep in mind to see if it bears out

Isentropy posted:

Honesty: let's loving let her run for PM in an election so she can do Ignatieff Part 2

Ardennes posted:

The F-15E had carry nuclear bombs and using are nukes are currently being tested on the F-15EX...so that isn't right at all. I don't know where you are getting this from. Also, it is going to be years before the Germans get their F-35s.

Also, if you are trying to make a argument about the relatively "lack of expense" of the F-35 it is going to be a hard one because we are already know about the supply issues it has been having: at very least you need the aircraft to fly. I have also seen noticably higher estimates on costs per flight hour much less every other issue the program has.

The job of a fighter-bomber is also to have enough bombs to actually do damage to a target it "hauls" bombs to a target and then guess what? It drops them.

Personally, I am okay with the Germans further limiting their offensive capabilities in the air along with the rapid decline in the Heer. I think demilitarization of Europe has been a while in coming and it seems like the Poles may be claiming to be a stick in the mud but in all honesty their economy probably isn't going to be able to take a real arms build up for long.

Frosted Flake posted:

We had a study, before buying the new rifle from Colt Canada anyway, that showed that really the accuracy of the shooter was the only measurable difference at 400m. I'm sure that directly contributed to us buying an angled and vertical grip alongside every rifle in the name of ergonomics, but that misses the point. The rifleman is the limitation, not the rifle, and realistically probably has been since at least the 1970's, more likely earlier.

However, training marksmanship is all personnel costs, spending money on hardware goes to the MIC. It's clear which way that's going to go. Part of the reason we don't train marksmanship like it's 1910 is because combat history shows it doesn't really matter, but somehow that's never stopped spending on hardware.

mlmp08 posted:

Boring stuff like HEMTTs are real success stories, and they actually have utility in things like disaster response or civil assistance in a way that fancy missiles or jets simply do not.

Frosted Flake posted:

In my experience “guns unavailable for fire mission” is understood as “out of ammo” by the requester, but may actually mean anything from firing another mission, to on a fire plan, all the way to maintenance, repositioning or crews need to rest.

Some shell types, like illum or smoke, our allotment is much smaller and we will refuse requests for that reason to preserve them. HE is plentiful enough it’s used to spot for those missions so it’s not a big deal.

It could be, as Ardennes said about logistics, the supply of shells hasn’t been brought up yet that morning, so the gun position is low, but that doesn’t mean the army is out of shells, just that we have to wait for the pallets to get kicked out of trucks before firing a major mission.

A certain amount of ammo on position will be reserved for FPF or Brigade fires anyways, so there too “out of shells” and “out of shells for you” are different things.

tl;dr There’s never enough artillery for the infantry, from their point of view.

Hatebag posted:

spacetoaster posted:

What's going to happen to lib brains when the reality of this war (how it's going to end) actually comes to be?

I'm seeing all these people who 100% believe that Ukraine has just been owning the Russian army over, and over, and over again for months while taking almost no losses whatsoever. And they believe that the Ukrainians are all libs just like them.


Aren't you never supposed to fall for your own propaganda?

sum posted:

Oryx claims they've captured several hundred Russian AFVs, even if you divide that by a few times for vehicles that were never actually recovered or completely totaled it's still a lot. I can think of plenty of videos where Ukrainians are incidentally shown driving Russian captures. That said, the fact that they can't repair loving ex-Soviet AFVs is pretty damning.