(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Bringing up the terrible situation on the front is ironic, that situation would be far better if enough people had joined the army for proper rotation of units.
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Apr 26, 2024 07:02
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:58 |
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BabyFur Denny posted:I already left my home country, should I travel back and die defending a place I have no more ties to? I don't know your circumstances, but you say in your post that universally nothing is worthy fighting for. All revolutionaries, civil rights defenders and suffragettes in history were just empty-heads. Palestinians? They should all just leave. I would rather die than live with a 'conviction' such as that. And at least the dead never complain but the living complain all the time... (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 26, 2024 07:13
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Nenonen posted:I don't know your circumstances, but you say in your post that universally nothing is worthy fighting for. All revolutionaries, civil rights defenders and suffragettes in history were just empty-heads. Palestinians? They should all just leave. I would rather die than live with a 'conviction' such as that. Would you seriously blame any Palestinian for wanting to leave their home and trying to find a better life somewhere else? Would you send a Russian guy requesting asylum in your country back to Russia, so he can get drafted and fight Ukrainians?
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Apr 26, 2024 07:19
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BabyFur Denny posted:A country that I'm neither a citizen nor a permanent resident of, that would kick me out the moment I lose my job? Seriously? BabyFur Denny posted:my loyalty is to the community I chose On first impression it is not clear how these statements fit together. I suppose the "community (you) chose" is not a country or political subunit.
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Apr 26, 2024 07:53
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They would, presumably, die for the right to post.
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Apr 26, 2024 07:59
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Dulce et decorum est pro cacascripto mori
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Apr 26, 2024 08:14
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People who have the means to GTFO when disaster strikes often do. Is it fair to those who have to stay behind? No. That's why it carries jail time if you're caught. Am I going to look someone in the face and say "you should have died so others could live"? Also no. Personally, I'm not sure what I'd do because I'm not in that situation, but my desire to not die a horrible painful death is pretty drat strong. Edit: this is mostly just to say that these kinds of moral questions are inherently subjective. You can think of someone else however you like for the decisions they make, but laying down their life is not something I could personally ever demand from someone. Nenonen posted:I would rather die than live with a 'conviction' such as that. This is just too much for me. Think about what you're implying here. You're not just saying your beliefs are better or correct, but that having a different set of beliefs is worse than being dead. Part of life (and D&D more specifically) is understanding that people have different values. Even if you're being facetious, you shouldn't judge people so harshly. KillHour fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 08:23
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Nothing against the OP for saying they wouldn't be willing to die in a war, their choice and all, but saying anyone who is willing is "empty headed" seems a bit off. You can't expect respect for your personal choice if you immediately disrespect the choice to stay and fight.
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Apr 26, 2024 11:25
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Dirt5o8 posted:Nothing against the OP for saying they wouldn't be willing to die in a war, their choice and all, but saying anyone who is willing is "empty headed" seems a bit off. You can't expect respect for your personal choice if you immediately disrespect the choice to stay and fight. Fair. I skimmed past that statement.
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Apr 26, 2024 11:36
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Dirt5o8 posted:Nothing against the OP for saying they wouldn't be willing to die in a war, their choice and all, but saying anyone who is willing is "empty headed" seems a bit off. You can't expect respect for your personal choice if you immediately disrespect the choice to stay and fight. Iirc Bertolt Brecht was quite young when he said that so it's probably partly youthful radicalism
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Apr 26, 2024 11:47
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3rdEyeDeuteranopia posted:The 1994 agreement with Russia, the US and the UK to give up nukes in exchange for Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders. It's been made very clear the last few years or decades that the absolute best thing a country that has aggressive neighbours can do, is to have nuclear weapons.
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Apr 26, 2024 11:54
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Perhaps people who fight for Ukraine also fight for (or against) some ideals, and not just for the whole country but for their local community that they chose to identify with. Surely, my grandfather wasn't a moron for joining the army and fighting the nazis, although he could have fled to Tajikistan when Belarus was occupied. Conversely, of course, there is no shame in that my other grandfather did just that. Not all people can be heroes, and I honestly don't know what I'd be doing.
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Apr 26, 2024 11:54
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BabyFur Denny posted:Only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country. I'd also nope the gently caress out of there if my country was under attack and I was in danger of being drafted. Especially to frontlines like the ones in Ukraine. BabyFur Denny posted:A country that I'm neither a citizen nor a permanent resident of, that would kick me out the moment I lose my job? Seriously? I’m glad that you’re in a position to pick up and move to another country. That doesn’t mean that people who care about the people in their hypothetical attacked country (and want to do their part to protect them) are “empty headed.” Protecting people you care about it as noble a cause as it gets. Yeah, war is loving dumb and terrible and you could immediately die from any number of things in it arbitrarily. But making GBS threads on people fighting for what they care about while posting with a nihilist tone feels way off and makes me feel… poo poo I don’t know… Sadness(?) that there aren’t people important enough to you to fight for but that you also think that people who DO choose to fight are empty headed because they do have people they care about protecting. If any of this came off as smarmy, that wasn’t my intent and maybe I’m reading more nihilism into your post than is really there. But with all sincerity it just made me feel some sort of sad feeling for you that you don’t have people worth fighting for to the point that you can’t understand why people would make the choice to fight.
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Apr 26, 2024 13:45
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While nation states have a bad rep (thanks, Adolf), on a broader level it's also a consideration IMO that nations like Ukraine have their own language and cultural heritage that people think is worth protecting. I'm an old, out-of-shape goon so I wouldn't be much use in a fight, but I'd fight to save my family or, in the abstract, my language. Finland is a pretty small country compared to Ukraine, population-wise, too, so I would hope people here felt proud enough about our language and what little culture we have, and I would assume many Ukrainians feel the same about their own home. I realize I am chatting with my posting buddies here in a language that isn't actually mine, but I get the impression that since the US is comprised of all sorts of "national identities" and languages and so forth, it might be easy to forget that nations have (contrived and mostly bull-poo poo, but still) reasons for existing for the sake of their people. If General Ripper went ape-poo poo and nuked the physical location of Finland into glass, that wouldn't erase Finnish language from the world, or even Finnish culture. But the people I'd trust the most with making sure Finland keeps on truckin' on are, well, I guess Finnish politicians who are mostly awful but at least they know where their bread is buttered. And all the other fine folk who work for their communities. I can understand the general mentality of FYGM in the sense that war is awful and no one wants to fight in one except for people with mental problems, but I wouldn't leave Finland if we were attacked. My grandfather had to escape his home due to Stalin's war, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I hope this isn't too chauvinistic, but I think there are things worth defending in this world. Even if you die in the process.
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Apr 26, 2024 14:10
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Baby Denny is, I think, German, and picked a quote from a famous German to hide behind, of course disregarding the context (a 15 year old school boy opposing German aggression in World War 1) and that Brecht was strongly supporting Roosevelt opening a second front in Europe. His own son fought the Nazis on the US side. Brecht, just like fellow emigrant Einstein, agreed that there are things worth going to war for. Using WW1 pacifism and pacifists (Einstein,Brecht etc.) in support of your stance wrt Ukraine is one of the few genuinely-German talking points in this war, culminating in Scholz´s advisor equating 2022 Russia with 1914 France and Germans demanding Ukraine be sent weapons with the Kaiser´s imperialism. Sick people!
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Apr 26, 2024 14:51
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AP reports AFU is not currently using the M1 tanks it received from the US. Russian drone warfare is too intense for the tanks to be useful. Makes sense, we've seen a lot of footage of Russian tanks being at the receiving end of cheap drone attacks. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-abrams-tanks-19d71475d427875653a2130063a8fb7a Hoping I won't see an article saying the F-16 jets that have been talked about basically since the beginning of the conflict being of little use due to too dense Russian AA coverage.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:23
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tanks...dead? (I continue to believe that this is the case, at least until some practical means of tank platoons adequately protecting themselves from drone threats on the front line is deployed.) d64 posted:
pretty much knew that going in, though. the main use was providing AA coverage allowing the use of AA assets for missile defense
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Apr 26, 2024 16:31
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They dont have a lot of M1A1s. Not deploying em due to high drone density makes sense.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:35
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d64 posted:AP reports AFU is not currently using the M1 tanks it received from the US. Russian drone warfare is too intense for the tanks to be useful. Makes sense, we've seen a lot of footage of Russian tanks being at the receiving end of cheap drone attacks. quote:Hoping I won't see an article saying the F-16 jets that have been talked about basically since the beginning of the conflict being of little use due to too dense Russian AA coverage.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:59
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Have they started slaving small auto-cannons to firing computers and letting them go nuts yet to try and deal with the drones on either side?
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Apr 26, 2024 17:07
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I have a feeling American defense contractors are feverishly working on automated anti-drone technology that can be attached to things like tanks
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Apr 26, 2024 17:16
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Nervous posted:Have they started slaving small auto-cannons to firing computers and letting them go nuts yet to try and deal with the drones on either side? Isn't that literally what a Gepard is? The problem is that Gepards didn't seem like a worthwhile thing to have around, so there are not that many of them in existence any more. But I imagine similar systems are now being planned, on all sides, since it turns out they're really good against drones
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Apr 26, 2024 17:22
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Scratch Monkey posted:I have a feeling American defense contractors are feverishly working on automated anti-drone technology that can be attached to things like tanks They started work on that stuff years ago and much of it is already finished. Its more of a question of how much the US will buy at this point and how it will be used exactly. Most of the better anti drone systems use a dedicated vehicle instead of being a direct on tank upgrade though. They did that on purpose because even years ago it was becoming apparent that the Abrams was getting too heavy.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:27
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I imagine the cost of trying to retrofit the various 60s-70s light AA cannon systems with modern computers and other hardware to make them suitable for targeting drones wouldn't be feasible even if the cold war stocks still were there.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:29
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jaete posted:Isn't that literally what a Gepard is? I think so, I'm just picturing something even more down scaled to the point where it's squad deployable.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:32
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They're working on laser based point defense systems like dragonfire but you need a pretty beefy power supply so it's not very portable.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:34
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steinrokkan posted:I imagine the cost of trying to retrofit the various 60s-70s light AA cannon systems with modern computers and other hardware to make them suitable for targeting drones wouldn't be feasible even if the cold war stocks still were there. They've already built modern versions (as in, they're SPAAG's and not exactly built like Gepards) and gave Ukraine some. They started back in mid 2023. I think the UK and some other countries have whipped up something similar and given to the Ukrainians too. They work just fine. The issue with them is they still don't have enough and the range of these guns is actually rather short. Typically only a few KM. Which means you need huge numbers of them if you want to cover large areas. Gepard runs into the same issue. All SPAAG's do. Its why so many countries started relying more on missiles instead. They give you lots more range for a similar weight. The problem with missiles is the cost and production times. They're very expensive and slow to produce in comparison to drones. Hence the switch back to SPAAGs of one sort or another over the last few years. The US started looking into it back in 2020 at least I believe when it became apparent they weren't going to have enough missiles to protect against drones. PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 17:46
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I'll try to do an effort-post later (I've been meaning to for some time), but here are a few thoughts re: drones and tanks.
Obligatory "tell your politicians that 2% GDP is not enough. 2% maintains, and our current stance will not deter. To deter you need far more overmatch than you need to win. Get to 4% of GDP on defense unless you want a wider war in a few years." Remember a couple years ago when I was posting about how armies historically have an almost terrifying ability to reconstitute themselves? Consider this: Russia today has almost twice--twice--the number of troops in Ukraine as it did when they invaded.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:54
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Lack of HE on a tank is shocking given even I know they mostly don't fight other tanks....
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Apr 26, 2024 18:09
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OddObserver posted:Lack of HE on a tank is shocking given even I know they mostly don't fight other tanks.... HE doesn't work well on other modern-ish tanks and Abrams prime opponent and target on the battlefield is going to be other tanks. So that is what they mostly arm for. Artillery can be called in most of the time if HE is needed anyways. Bear in mind too its not like they can fit 100's of rounds inside these things either. Abrams has space for only 55rd of 105mm and 40ish rd of 120mm. This is about the same as other tanks of similar cannon size. Cannon ammo is big and heavy. edit: true but the military doesn't see this as a huge issue though its generally acknowledged by a lot of tankers that they like to keep at least a few HE rounds in the tank if they can for just that sort've thing\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ edit 2: current load outs are based on current doctrine which will obviously change over time but more HE probably won't be issued to take out drones or ATGM teams. A better version of CROWS would however and so far if I had to guess that seems to be the way the military is drifting now. That and they've got Trophy on their newer Abrams too for ATGM defense. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 18:20
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yeah but the main thing tanks can do right now that artillery can't is direct fire HE to deal with certain stubborn targets. in the modern battlefield, right now, it's clear you don't need tanks to deal with tanks
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Apr 26, 2024 18:23
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Russia has managed to reconstitute itself, but to what extent is that reproducible? They're drawing down massive Soviet stockpiles that were built for an apocalyptic WW3 (and expected to reach the bottom of the barrel next year) and wrecking their demographic tower of Pisa even further in order to fill boots. I'm not saying that Europe doesn't need to get a functioning defense in place, and if they don't want to fund individual armies than a federal European army is the way to do it. But unless the plan is to order equipment from China and press gang all of Central Asia, I'm not sure what they can really field further.
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Apr 26, 2024 18:26
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tanks don't have HE shells anymore for the sake of game balance, they were too overpowered otherwise
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Apr 26, 2024 18:26
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Morrow posted:Russia has managed to reconstitute itself, but to what extent is that reproducible? I think most of the experts are still saying they'll start to run out of even the mediocre and rusted but still dangerous Soviet era stuff around late 2024-mid 2025 depending on what sort've stuff you have in mind. After that it'll be only fully new production (not just upgraded or refurbished old stuff often counted as new) to send to get blown up. For man power they'll probably happily send their boys into the meatgrinder for a long long time. The Russian leadership doesn't care about its people. You'd have to look at things from a more event driven perspective I think to even consider a time line though. The only time Putin has been willing to pull people back so far has been if it was apparent they were going to lose huge numbers of them in a very short time period and even for them that isn't something they can sustain for long. So whenever the Russian lines are in immanent collapse while the Ukrainians are pushing hard and taking land back by the km hourly or daily. I think we're a long way from that still...
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Apr 26, 2024 18:37
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OddObserver posted:Lack of HE on a tank is shocking given even I know they mostly don't fight other tanks.... There is a reason the US military has been fighting congress since the 80s to have a light tanks. The US military has fully developed dozens of light tank programs and every single one has been cancelled because congress goes "herp derp. We have tonk, why need new tonk? New tonk smaller and weaker than old tonk. No need new tonk. New tonk bad". The fact the Booker/Griffin got approval is a loving miracle, and probably because the army didn't everything in power have this thing categorize as a light reconnaissance vehicle.
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Apr 26, 2024 19:02
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Paladinus posted:although he could have fled to Tajikistan when Belarus was occupied. Conversely, of course, there is no shame in that my other grandfather did just that. really though, of all places, Tajikistan? i guess if you wanted go somewhere in the ussr that was guaranteed to be peaceful and quiet, tajikistan is pretty up there
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Apr 26, 2024 19:03
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:They've already built modern versions (as in, they're SPAAG's and not exactly built like Gepards) and gave Ukraine some. They started back in mid 2023. Also the older SPAAGS are often just not good enough in accuracy to hit drone-sized targets out to most of their coverage area. Armenia had this problem in Nagorno-Karabakh where they thought ZSU-23s would be able to stop drone attacks but they have to expend almost their entire ammunition supply just to hit one drone at the end of its engagement envelope. The Gepard's better, but that's why the huge stock of old ZSU-23-4 SPAAGs aren't doing much.
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Apr 26, 2024 19:36
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50-57mm fused airburst is the future
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Apr 26, 2024 19:41
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They should send in their olympic skeet team
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Apr 26, 2024 19:42
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:58 |
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Panzeh posted:Also the older SPAAGS are often just not good enough in accuracy to hit drone-sized targets out to most of their coverage area. Armenia had this problem in Nagorno-Karabakh where they thought ZSU-23s would be able to stop drone attacks but they have to expend almost their entire ammunition supply just to hit one drone at the end of its engagement envelope. The Gepard's better, but that's why the huge stock of old ZSU-23-4 SPAAGs aren't doing much. Kind of funny if you know the last Gepard was built in 1980. And that's the more "modern" one?  To be fair, the Bundeswehr used them until 2010, so I assume they got periodically upgraded, but still... the youngest Gepard is now 44 years old. At least we now have a modern variant of the good old Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer: Rheinmetall is already selling the new "Skyranger" as Gepard-replacement across Europe. Germany gets the new prototype end of this year, and then the first 18 massproduction models. Other countries like Austria and Denmark have already started showing interest. So if Ukraine can hold out for long enough, the war might get even weirder when we replace their surviving Gepards with Skyrangers from 2025 onwards. Edit: Googling Gepards made me think about what, exactly, we Germans have or want to deliver to Ukraine, so I went to our government site listing what we have plus planned near-future deliveries, and wow, that's a lot more than I expected. We're really turning over the sofa cushions for this one, it seems. I didn't even know the Bundeswehr had this many drones! Also  at the Russians being concerned about our few Leos, they should be more concerned about the 14k anti-tank mines we handed over. That, and the 5k generic explosives and detonators. Good for clearing debris, the latter ones. But also good for laying traps.Anyway, right now it's probably more important for Ukraine that we want to send a combined 19 or something new IRIS-T air defense systems, now that production has finally started going faster. Currently, Ukraine has four of them, so that's a lot of future gear to come, especially considering we want to re-arm the Bundeswehr at the same time. I hope we can keep up with missile production, the IRIS-T eats ammunition like candy Libluini fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 20:12
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