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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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dieselfruit posted:means tested invasion
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Nov 9, 2022 21:28
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Throatwarbler posted:RWA has some comedy takes on twitter but one I thought insightful was that Putin and the Russian "street" (as opposed to bloodthirsty nationalist twitter posters most of whom probably don't live in Russia) have been pretty reluctant to get on board with even the independence of the DPR/LPR, let alone annexation. While they don't want NATO on their doorstep, their relationship with the likes of Strelkov and Givi were never all that warm. What Putin really wants, and their ideal endgame at least at the beginning, was a return to the status ante ante bellum pre 2014 and a pro-Russian government in Kiev. Minsk 2 would have left the Donbas a part of Ukraine, but no legitimately popular Ukrainian government that included the Donbas could be pro-NATO, Zelensky certainly was not elected on that platform. Yeah. From the very beginning it has been pretty unclear what strategic victory for Russia would like here. The only way this war ever made any sense to start, was if they thought they could achieve a quick and relatively bloodless victory, install a friendly government, and not suffer any significant blowback. How anyone ever came to be convinced that would be the case, I have no idea. But it explains why they were operationally not prepared to fight any substantial war, and it explains why subsequent recalibrations and mobilizations have been pretty half assed--they are in a situation where the war they wanted to fight doesn't exist, and the political objectives they wanted to achieve don't seem attainable.
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Nov 12, 2022 00:56
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11% of the time, it works 100% of the time
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Nov 15, 2022 23:53
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Azathoth posted:They aren't willing or able to endure the kind of casualties to force Ukraine to negotiate from a position of weakness, and on the other side, Ukraine has shown an ability and a willingness to endure outsized casualty numbers to hold off Russia. Better equipment would obviously help Russia both reduce casualties themselves and exacerbate Ukrainian casualties, but only incrementally. All the mobilization in the world isn't going to help them if they fear the political fallout from dead conscripts, which they clearly do. Yes it is very curious that a nation being invaded is able to muster the support for full mobilization, while a larger, invading military with limited war aims and a population otherwise under peacetime conditions is unable to do so. There is certainly no near-ubiquitous and easily understood historical precedent for this--clearly it is a case of Russian benevolence and aversion to violence vs. Ukrainian bloodlust.
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Nov 17, 2022 01:15
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Frosted Flake posted:“limited war aims” and “aversion to violence” and “full mobilization” and “bloodlust” mean the same thing here in effect, it’s just a difference in tone. Fair enough, but this thread occasionally sees a narrative where this disparity (between the Russian vs. Ukrainian general willingness to fight a war and take casualties) is either somehow remarkable, surprising, or due to some pernicious feature in the character of the Ukrainian government/people. That if different or more rational people were making decisions in Ukraine, the situation would be different. Or, similarly, if Russia simply was more serious and less compassionate they would be doing what it took to win. The reality is that Russia's avoidance of large scale mobilization and relatively limited approach to the war are necessary, not because they give a poo poo about spilled blood on either side, but because the moment this becomes (indeed the moment it became) a large scale war, there is basically no possible outcome that is politically beneficial to them. This entire "SMO" was predicated on the idea of a quick and relatively bloodless war culminating in a more cooperative Ukrainian government, supported by a significant plurality of pro-Russian Ukrainians (fat chance of that now). On the other hand, for the Ukrainian government, this was an existential threat from the beginning of the invasion (their many opportunities to avoid one in the first place notwithstanding). Similarly, the average Russian obviously isn't going to give too much of a poo poo about any of this, whereas even the perception of a foreign attack on one's country is the #1 thing that historically has motivated public support for mobilization--let alone actually being bombed or having tanks rolling down streets. So idk when people wonder why "Russia is dragging this out" or otherwise not going for the kill, or commenting on the relative Ukrainian "willingness to endure casualties" as if it's somehow remarkable, it reads as something at least adjacent to the moralistic good guy v. bad guy junk that this thread is generally pretty good about not falling into.
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Nov 17, 2022 02:14
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Frosted Flake posted:With Russia having, as you said, limited and well understood war aims, the Ukrainian government deciding to fight total war from day one, including arming the populace immediately, has tied the fate of the nation to the maintenance of their policy and refusal to negotiate, which is only making things more dangerous as time goes on. Yeah, but once a population has committed to full mobilization, how often has strategic bombing, or the tenuous and limited occupations fought by a smaller invading force spread too thin, ever resulted in a substantial negotiated surrender? Go look at your field manuals, see how many troops Russia would, doctrinally, want to have to occupy even the territory they've claimed so far, and then look at what they've got. Are the Russians supposed to grind the Ukrainians down by blowing up infrastructure with air raids? When has that ever worked? Realistically, even if the Ukrainian government decided to negotiate terms now--what would they reasonably settle for that Russia would accept? Simply returning to the pre-war situation would require Russia to basically take a hard L on the entire situation, and renounce control over at least some (ostensibly) annexed territories, so that's no-go. Ukraine conceding territory not only around the Donbas but also in S/SE Ukraine around Melitopol and Mariupol would go a step further and at least allow a Russian land bridge to Crimea...but even that would fall far short of Russia's initial war aims and do literally nothing to achieve any of their stated political objectives. So even for Russia, it would be a consolation prize, far enough removed from Russia's invasion rhetoric as to carry potentially severe political consequences domestically. And for Ukraine...why would they settle for that now, when they are "winning"? Anything beyond that would require, at minimum, the mutual expectation that Russia will eventually occupy and hold more territory than they have now...as they are presently losing territory, half-assing mobilization, and generally being fuckups. For any kind of negotiated settlement there needs to be, on both sides, some mutually similar idea of where the war will end up, and the cost of concessions away from those borders vs. the cost of war. Right now, that doesn't exist, and I don't think it's really the fault of the Ukrainian government. They are doing what any country would be expected to do under the circumstances--they are continuing to fight while they are making gains, and they are exploiting the public support they have both in response to the initial invasion and from successful counter-offensives. They are doing this to maximize their position in any subsequent negotiations, and so that they can negotiate from a position of strength. Maybe things will go to poo poo in 3 months, but right now they aren't, and based on everything the Russians are doing or have done...there isn't a great reason to suspect that they are gonna turn this thing around any time soon. Fact is, the Ukrainians don't have much to go on when it comes to estimating how much they can reasonably win vs. what Russia will reasonably take/hold, because Russia has been consistently coming in well below expectations for months. The Russians, on the other hand, clearly have no idea what the gently caress they are doing or what they want out of this. Their initial war aims were clear enough: to, after a quick, decisive, and limited war, arrive at a more cooperative Ukrainian government, supported by a significant number of pro-Russian Ukrainians. That clearly isn't happening anymore. So what, ultimately, do they want, how much blood and treasure are they willing to spend towards it, and to what strategic or political end. Frankly, I'm not sure even they know the answer to these questions--especially the last part. What does strategic victory even look like at this point? What's clear enough is that before figuring that out, they are trying to stem the bleeding and at least stabilize the current situation--and even then they are failing, and probably reaching the limits of what is politically sustainable. So, as limited or as well understood Russia's war aims may have been, the path towards them has been evaporated for months, and in the meantime they are presiding over one of the most bumblefucked offensives in the history of contemporary warfare. Under those circumstances, is it really surprising, at ALL, that a negotiated surrender by Ukraine has not been forthcoming? You can certainly argue that the human cost of this war grinding on over these territorial and political considerations is unacceptable. Or that it is stupid, and wrong, to throw human lives away in such number just to "solve" for your best post-war territorial outcome, rather than negotiating for a potentially less favorable one today. But that's literally every war. It is both possible and common for wars to start over stupid reasons, and to continue for stupid long, just because each side expects it has more to gain by fighting. You know that better than most people. What's new? Morbus has issued a correction as of 03:48 on Nov 17, 2022 |
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Nov 17, 2022 03:44
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Dreylad posted:The Russia dragging things out is fair enough, but it's really hard to say exactly what the Ukrainians will be happy with. They've said all recaptured territories, but as they push further east that's going to cost more and more lives and at some point you expect them to sit down to get more territorial concessions diplomatically and not through spending lives. I mean I don't think they're going to try to march on Moscow so figuring out exactly how far is far enough has been kind of perplexing. It does come down to when Russia shifts from "negotiations to secure what we've got" to "get a peace deal before we're completely embarrassed and lose everything." It's a good question, and I think Russia would make figuring it out a lot clearer if they would STOP making GBS threads THE BED. How far is far enough? When will recapturing territory become no longer worth it? Who the gently caress knows?! If you told me 6 months ago Russia would be withdrawing from Kherson I would have been incredulous but here we are.
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Nov 17, 2022 03:47
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Frosted Flake posted:The Atlantic Council said it best when they observed that Georgia failed by not daring Russia to destroy Tbilisi and its civilian population. The Ukrainian government’s success ultimately comes from exploiting that, there’s no reason for them to have done all this over Minsk II, and while you can point to their success at doing so it’s come at the cost of their civil society, economy, who knows what else. See this is what I mean when I say stuff that is "adjacent to the moralistic good guy v. bad guy junk that this thread generally does a good job of not falling into". It is my firm and longstanding conviction that the Ukainian government are a pack of shitters. However, saying "there's no reason for them to have done all this over Minsk II, is, at the very least, a deeply asymmetrical framing. It was, at the end of the day, Russia that decided to invade Ukraine. And it was Russia that apparently failed to plan for the entirely predictable response and it was Russia that failed in its war plan so badly as to completely destroy any chance of achieving it's initial war aims. At least the Ukrainian thought process has some shred of logic to it: 1.) Ignore Russia 2.) They won't invade us because that would be loving stupid 3.) Profit (literally) Whereas for Russia, I guess it was: 1.) Conduct an limited offensive with a number of troops both incompatible with our own doctrine and enormously below well accepted force ratios, because anything more than that is too much trouble to be worth it 2.) ??? 3.) Ukraine is now friendly Which, you know, if you just roll over Ukraine sure I guess maybe? But it was a dumb loving plan to begin with and it became exponentially dumber as it became clear they couldn't pull it off.
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Nov 17, 2022 04:13
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Frosted Flake posted:Yes. If Russia had decided on the doctrinally appropriate course of action, they would, at the very least, be able to durably occupy territory on their side of the Dnieper, and the best even the most bullheaded Ukrainian government could hope for would be pointless attritional warfare at the periphery, punctuated by slow but steady Russian territorial gains. More likely the Ukrainian government and military would have just collapsed if it was faced with that kind of force well before its own mobilization materialized or before they could recieve significant foreign support. Under such circumstances, maybe the Ukrainians would come to a negotiated surrender quickly. Maybe they would come to one eventually. Maybe it would become a years long frozen conflict. Who knows, it's a counterfactual. But in any case that's not what happened and Ukraine "exploited" the situation by countering the eminently counterable Russian offensive because of course they did.
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Nov 17, 2022 04:32
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:Going forward I think there's a real concern that Zelensky can't survive a negotiated peace. Like he has reasons to stake out the position that Ukraine will reclaim all Ukrainian territory that go beyond fear for his personal safety, especially when they seem to be winning, but ultranationalists who wear a bunch of weird symbols blaming their Jewish president for stabbing them in the back if they don't get all their hopes and dreams seems like the most predictable thing in the world. I agree 100%. Even without the outright nazis, I think recent counteroffensives have created a feedback loop of enthusiasm that makes backing down politically untenable. I don't really know when poo poo will hit the fan but I think Russia's behavior will radically change when things shift from "Lost Cause SMO" to "Defending Crimea".
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Nov 17, 2022 04:47
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Frosted Flake posted:worst case Russia mobilizing on a large scale in February might have gotten Minsk II signed. Tbh I thought this was gonna be the plan, with the initial mobilization for "exercises" being a prelude. Then they just went leeroy jenkins with <200k people during mud season and welp. Even then, I thought "well maybe they know something we don't". Turns out they did, it was just all bullshit.
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Nov 17, 2022 04:58
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Lostconfused posted:8. To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. "Confront your soldiers with the deed itself; never let them know your design. When the outlook is bright, bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when the situation is gloomy."
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Nov 17, 2022 06:18
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genericnick posted:Vladimir, I'm not asking for much...
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Nov 17, 2022 20:31
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genericnick posted:Does this matter? Modern SAMs aren't really going to stop the drones. Honestly, that seems to be a large part of the missile drama. Zelensky was claiming 100% hit rates, so if they just had those NATO SAMs the attacks would stop. If your missiles land in random villages in Poland your air defense is probably not hitting 10/10 shots and even more SAMs won't change that. Which I guess would be pretty demotivating. I mean, the closer you get to a 100% interception rate (by virtue of just launching more missiles), the more failures and Investments in Eastern Poland you're gonna get.
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Nov 17, 2022 20:40
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Frosted Flake posted:Germany and Japan were unable to produce essential equipment such as aircraft engines, production supply chains of most military goods were severely disrupted for lack of components and subassemblies, bombing rail lines, roundhouses and yards eventually caused chaos in timetables and eventually the rail nets collapsed, ships were not able to put to sea for lack of fuel, tens of thousands of personnel and huge quantities of resources were diverted to firefighting, air defence and other home front duties. Bombing can absolutely destroy a nation's ability to produce war materiel or much of anything, and can make any kind of significant offensive military action impossible or hopeless. That was true in WWII, and it's honestly a lot truer now with weapons that can even occasionally be relied upon hit specific point targets. But Russia didn't start a war with Ukraine to destroy their ability to conduct offensives, they went to war to achieve some degree of political control over the country, to produce a government more friendly towards Russia, and to leverage pro-Russian Ukrainians against nationalists or otherwise anti-Russians to form a politically dominant coalition. Strategic bombing can not and will not achieve that, and will almost certainly work opposite to those goals. Also, at this point, Russia can't achieve any of it's political objectives without some kind occupation of at least parts of Ukraine. Strategic bombing has a pretty poo poo track record at enabling a successful military occupation of an uncooperative population, in the absence of force ratios that would enable a successful occupation regardless. You can't make up for a deficient war plan on the ground with strategic bombing. I honestly can't think of a single counterexample. The usefulness of this bombing is that it may (eventually) destroy Ukraine's ability to conduct successful, conventional counter-offensives in areas that are actually being defended. And in doing so, it could burst the hype bubble that is presently discouraging Ukraine from coming to the table or receding from a maximalist position. But I don't think it's gonna help Russia take or hold territory, so it doesn't do anything to resolve the main problem: Russia cannot achieve any of it's political objectives, or even come away from this saving face domestically, if all it holds is what it's holding now
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Nov 19, 2022 00:04
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Ardennes posted:I can think of plenty of examples where strategic bombing did help weaken a countries’ ability to resist ground offensive, it has always lead to at least some successful occupations. Saying the outcome would have been different in Vietnam had the Americans "gone further" is a counterfactual. It's also not really supported by anything...even as air campaigns were being heavily ramped up, the situation on the ground only got worse. Iraq 1 involved a massive ground offensive on many fronts with doctrinally normal force ratios and organization, extensively committed logistics, and ultimately did not involve a significant occupation or taking of territory. The occupation in Iraq 2 was an abject failure and in any case did not involve widescale strategic bombing for the majority of the war. Anyway, there is no doubt that bombing can weaken a nation's ability to conduct war, destroy its industrial potential outright, or support an invasion. The problem is: then what? Occupations by an under-manned ground force, against an uncooperative population, have almost always (always?) ended in failure--irrespective of any support by strategic bombing. Unless Russia is able to commit the necessary ground troops to occupy more territory, I don't think any amount of bombing will change that.
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Nov 19, 2022 01:43
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Frosted Flake posted:They haven’t, but uh I certainly wouldn’t endorse that approach, I uh...am not sure that is an example of a successful occupation by an undermanned ground force supported by strategic bombing. But even then, in the opinion of that author...that was a 50 year ordeal which vacillated between ineffective warfare and accommodation right up until the point where the Anglo-American forces had enough manpower to crush resistance:  Also, that was ultimately a campaign of removal, annihilation, and replacement, not an attempt to achieve limited political goals and end up with a nominally friendly or at least unhostile neighbor (and earlier campaigns to accomplish the latter all ended in failure). My point remains: Russian strategic bombing may be effective in halting Ukrainian momentum and counter-offensives (with even that probably being a slow process very contingent on how much western support they receive), and that may make the Ukrainians more ready to enter negotiations. But even if that happens...I don't see how Russia can improve their currently dismal negotiating position if they don't claim and hold more territory, and I'm not sure how they can do that without committing a many more ground forces. Just because you obliterate the war machine that powered previous successful Ukrainian counter-offensives (and again, not clear you can do that by bombing Ukraine when so much of it hinges on western aid), doesn't mean you can now magically go take back territory that was originally seized under far more favorable conditions (i.e. before Ukrainian mobilization and with all the advantages of initiative and surprise).
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Nov 19, 2022 03:35
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Frosted Flake posted:You asked when fewer troops had held down a country where many opposed them. This was not only once common, but the norm. The issue is that nobody wants to see the Russians work from the old playbook: My question was "when has strategic bombing allowed a ground force to occupy territory they were otherwise grossly unable to occupy?". The problem facing the Russian forces now isn't just that they are outnumbered (occupiers almost always are), or that many oppose them (which is often enough the case)--it's that, compared to successful occupations, or going by doctrine, they seem to have way fewer troops than would normally be expected as necessary. Actually in retrospect the most obvious recent example of a strategic bombing "success" is Syria, but even then I think we probably have to distinguish between a siege forcing a surrender/collapse, vs. aerial bombardment doing that in and of itself.
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Nov 19, 2022 04:06
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Frosted Flake posted:The answer is that just as ground forces are being used as a diplomatic and not military tool, and so doctrine is out the window, they are using air power for what the Americans call Coercive Diplomacy, as in Linebacker II. That was not a military success, but at the time Nixon viewed it as vital for bringing Vietnam to the table. The ground forces may be being used to strengthen a diplomatic position but, again, in order to do that it sure seems like they will need to occupy and hold more territory than they've got...and to do that it seems like they need more people on the ground, irrespective of any strategic bombing. Otherwise, what exactly is Russia's negotiating position? Is it going to be acceptable to them (the Russians) to walk away from this holding only what they've got, minus what they may be expected to lose in the foreseeable future? I agree that the reasoning here is analogous to Linebacker II. Linebacker II, of course, was a stupid, futile tantrum made largely out of an effort to save face. It ultimately accomplished nothing, the American "negotiating" position, such that it was, remained totally unchanged from where it was in October '72, and in any case the only article of the Paris Accords actually carried ot was the withdrawal of US forces. Everything else was disregarded by the North Vietnamese, who proceeded to spend the next 2 years kicking the poo poo out of everybody and taking complete control of Vietnam. So I think we can put that one solidly in the column of "strategic bombing failures".
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Nov 19, 2022 04:34
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Ardennes posted:To be honest I don’t think the problem the Russians has is holding territory versus the population but rather regular forces. In that sense, strategic bombing makes sense if they can debilitate the AFU in some fashion. Yeah that's fair enough, since so far the only thing that has pushed Russian forces out have been AFU counter-offensives. However: 1.) Those Russian gains were made, as I've said before, under very different circumstances than exist now, and mostly before Ukrainian mobilization really got going. Taking them back may prove to be very different. 2.) The Ukrainians are much more committed to the war than the Russians are. How effective will strategic bombing actually be at neutralizing the AFU on its own? Historically, even after the largest and most effective air campaigns, regular forces still had to be defeated on the ground. They are probably the last thing to be affected by bombing cities and infrastructure. 3.) If Ukraine is being propped up and resupplied by the west, bombing Ukraine can only accomplish so much 4.) Waiting for strategic bombing to wear down the AFU indirectly is a slow process, whereas AFU counter-offensives need to be dealt with now. So on balance, it seems Russia needs to address its mobilization problem, or these bombing campaigns will be a palliative measure at best.
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Nov 19, 2022 04:48
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Vomik posted:by this same argument, how will ukraine hold regions that don't wish to be part of it? dpr/lpr are the closest to the north vietnamese in this analogy, certainly not ukraine or russia Personally I don't expect them to, but again: if the prospective post-war borders are simply Donbas + Crimea + maybe a land bridge between them, is that enough for Russia to accept in a negotiated settlement, let alone Ukraine? Maybe, eventually, but for the forseeable future that just seems like it would be too big and too obvious of an L for Russia, and too far removed from its stated aims. It also may require Russia to officially withdraw from some places they have annexed, e.g. Kherson.
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Nov 20, 2022 02:35
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Ardennes posted:I don’t think territory is the issue (beyond Crimea) as much as a settlement on Ukraine’s military status. If that is up in the air, the war isn’t going to stop, period. Eh...again, at minimum, seems like they need to at least hold what they've "annexed" for it to be politically tenable at home. Besides that, though, how firm and how enforceable will any negotiated concessions be unless Russia is able to credibly threaten further territorial gains?
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Nov 20, 2022 04:23
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Raskolnikov38 posted:this sounds like buying russian gas with extra steps no, see, this is conflict-free gas
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Nov 21, 2022 06:02
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Z the IVth posted:Fancy way of saying 'missile'. APFSRPUCAVBIED
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Nov 30, 2022 02:23
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Frosted Flake posted:Russia being able to provide its own armaments while Ukraine is now totally dependant on outside actors is not a point in Ukraine’s favour. Not only in terms of the logistics, but because it’s contingent on foreign politics. Russia can provide as much arms as it wants, which may or may not be as much as it needs, while Ukraine has had its ambitions thwarted several times as MiGs, Patriots and other systems are withheld. It's not a point in Ukraine's favor...but it is probably better than Ukraine being dependent on domestic production that is 100% vulnerable to strategic bombardment Also, there are certain "advantages" to war production being externalized to countries that don't give a poo poo about the place where the war is being fought, if the goal is to sustain attritional war as long as possible
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Nov 30, 2022 21:47
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Lostconfused posted:And who's fault is that? idk but if it's not someone in russia or ukraine idgaf
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Dec 8, 2022 23:58
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GoLambo posted:https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/us-to-send-more-wunderwaffen-to-ukraine.html#more I mean, if you turn on any SAM radar, there are a half dozen ways it is going to be immediately geolocated.
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Dec 15, 2022 01:08
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mlmp08 posted:The devil is in target mensuration. a giant X that’s as wide as a whole base is better than nothing but not grids. And the example correlated commercial images is from 2018, so you’d be hard pressed to rely on correlations with old commercial imagery and simply assume no one ever moves radars. Yeah my point is in an actual military context (like this one), if you turn on a SAM radar, you are giving its position away, for reasons that have nothing to do with looking for interference in satellite SAR imagery. There are two ways to address this. One is to integrate many SAM batteries, radars, and aircraft into an air defense network, ideally supported by short-range air defense. This requires more than a token number of patriot batteries. The second way is to have mobile systems that don't turn their radar on very often and frequently move. Patriot is not a suitable system for this.
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Dec 15, 2022 01:41
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mlmp08 posted:Patriot is as mobile as S-300 and S-400. Russia and Ukraine have both jumped their SAMs to alternate battle positions frequently as a passive defense measure. I see no reason why the plan wouldn’t be to do the same with the western analogue. Repositioning a patriot or S-300 takes on the order of hours, not minutes, though. And during that time they are not effective. These systems are better described as semi-mobile. They are intended to be deployed as part of an IADS. Compared to something like Tor, which has a lower engagement range but is not a short-range system, can operate its radar while moving, and can simply stop when it needs to shoot then immediately move again. Also, Tor (and Buk) are on tracked vehicles, not wheels like S-300 or Patriot. Anyway, it is very difficult in a modern context to prevent an active ground based radar from being geolocated, especially from the air. Such systems have remained somewhat effective in Ukraine not because Russia has a hard time detecting or locating them, but because the VKS is just poorly equipped for destroying them, and Russian ground forces have been stuck along more or less fixed lines for months Doctrinally, Russia hasn't placed (and arguably doesn't need to place) the same emphasis on airborne SEAD as the US does, because it is generally assumed that ground forces are capable of advancing without needing air superiority, and they are more than capable of destroying ground based air defenses within their range. Finding themselves in an under-manned, attritional ground war where they haven't been able to execute their own doctrine, it's not a huge surprise that the air force has had limited success in picking up the slack.
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Dec 15, 2022 03:56
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mlmp08 posted:Eh, this is not convincing. You argue Russia knows where the enemy SAMs are but doesn’t target them because the Russians lack the ammo and equipment to hit static grids? I don’t think so. If Russian dynamic targeting could figure out where these SAM sites were rapidly enough to target them effectively, why wouldn’t they just hit the requisite number of them with Iskanders and/or cruise missiles to assist their air arm and infrastructure strikes? That is precisely what Russia did early on to more static sites like SA-3s and HQs and the like. That would save them ordnance, because you’d need to fire less cruise missiles at infrastructure to get the desired effect. Seems foolish to keep firing cruise missiles through the air defense gauntlet if Russia knows where the SAMs are. I think it’s just hard to keep a firm Find/Fix/Track/Target on these systems which relocate and selectively radiate. No, I'm mainly just saying an actively emitting ground based radar can be located fairly easily and promptly, that's it. That's why it's important to relocate units, to turn-on radars sparingly, to have multiple radars in different locations, separate surveillance and tracking radars, etc. The original comment I made is just that radar interference showing up on satellite SAR images isn't anything special or useful, there are dedicated ELINT platforms that are looking for these things, and they find them pretty easily. A hypothetical patriot radiating all day in one spot so that it shows up on SENTINEL was spotted by Russian ELINT way before that, lol. As far as Russia's ability to destroy Ukrainian air defenses go, there are several issues: 1.) Just because you can quickly geolocate an emitter, doesn't mean it's still going to be there. The person operating it knows they are giving their position away, after all 2.) Knowing where an emitter is, and knowing where it is accurately enough to kill it aren't the same thing. Just lobbing cruise missiles at SAMs without some additional, appropriate terminal guidance at isn't very efficient, SEAD with stand-off munitions generally requires some combination of anti-radiation, imaging, or laser terminal guidance, and most Russian cruise missiles don't tick these boxes. In terms of aircraft launched munitions, the situation is better but not great, and the VKS, for a variety of reasons, doesn't have the means or the inclination to task aircraft to do this. The way it's *supposed* to work, most of the time, is they kill them with artillery, but they can't do that for systems they can't reach, and they aren't advancing.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:the context here is that Russia is not conducting operations on a time-scale where "repositioning a Patriot system takes hours" is going to mean it'll be "easily" knocked-out. Yes absolutely. But the limiting factor here isn't "how long does it take for a giant gently caress-off radar to give itself away after turning on", it's all the other parts. That's all I'm saying.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:42
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Throatwarbler posted:I wonder if there's some reason why you can't say, just have 4 or 5 search radars per missile battery deployed far away enough from each other that any potential ARM launch platform is just going to run out of missiles trying to target all of them. I guess search radars are expensive? Probably compared to what gets spent on civilian stuff, but not in an actual war. Could you mimic the radar signature of a SAM radar cheaply using some kind of transmitter mounted on the back of a truck? Some larger S-300 sites do have multiple search & engagement radars and a large number of TELS. Even a single battery is often supported by SHORAD systems with their own radars, that are there to protect the SAM site. A proper IADS often supported by airborne radar/ELINT and has fighters on patrol or ready to be scrambled. And yes, IADS can be protected by all kinds of ECM and defensive aids: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-SAM-DefAids.html
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Dec 15, 2022 05:15
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Orange Devil posted:I would like it to be known that I also would win the war if I had an army. ok that didn't go so well, but give me another one...
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Dec 15, 2022 19:04
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American cop: accidentally shoots foot with pistol Polish cop: accidentally blows up HQ with a grenade launcher I approve.
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Dec 15, 2022 19:19
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Frosted Flake posted:Apparently civilian construction has the same preferences, though still no indication as to why: I'm not really sure about specifics, but firs are generally among the softwoods with the highest specific and absolute strength. For fortifications, I would guess that hardwoods like oak and beech are just not as abundant or practical in the regions of interest, apart from being harder to work with.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:20
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lobster shirt posted:grover?
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Jan 12, 2023 23:24
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Endman posted:One of the big issues with the nuclear arsenal of a failed state is that without constant supervision and maintenance, those fuelled up and ready to launch missiles will quickly degrade and start leaking horrible chemical fog all over the place, and may even explode in their tubes. The actual nuclear payload doesn’t even need to go off for these things to be incredibly dangerous. idk the USAF has been neglecting their nuclear arsenal for years and so far so good
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Jan 16, 2023 04:06
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Weka posted:How much more advanced is a Challenger 2 or Leopard 2 than a T72b? They are approximately equally advanced after being hit by anti-tank munitions, which is going to happen sooner rather than later in either case. The number of tanks, having crew available to man them, and the logistics to fuel, arm, maintain, or repair them, all matter a lot more than this tank or that tank.
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Jan 16, 2023 04:12
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Slavvy posted:It's kind of interesting to think about, like could f16's being vectored on target by an AWACS get the drop on mig31's with their absurd radar and long range missiles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdFGP1vE80I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwPMQM2DmwQ
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Jan 25, 2023 23:33
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Majorian posted:Uranium is magical, like mithril. wow hope russia never gets their hands on any...
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Jan 25, 2023 23:34
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