(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Ynglaur posted:Something tells me that smuggling into the country with the world's largest land border and one of the largest (the largest?) coasts is probably solvable. The point is not that it isn't possible to circumvent sanctions or embargos (I think it has been well established that smuggling works, you can't stop it even to prisons), it's that doing so is going to be inefficient/expensive compared to purchasing directly and good luck getting support from manufacturer when you encounter undocumented issues or need warranty replacements. In the end it throws a major spanner in the works, the more so when it comes to things that require technical support from manufacturer instead of something that you just take out of the box and start using. Additionally it gives opportunity for CIA et al to run their own smuggle op where they deliver industrial goods that have been altered in interesting ways. It wouldn't be the first time. As an example of sophisticated smuggling techniques, here's 100 kg of Finnish cheese caught from a minivan by Russian customs in 2017. Cheese exports to Russia were banned in 2014.   And another 150 kg of cheese, butter and meat products.  The bosses of those Russian customs officials lived like kings for months, I believe. Anyway, when you buy smuggled goods you are paying the smugglers a premium for something that is probably not up to standards.
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Mar 31, 2023 22:17
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
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"Are developing" is not quite the same as "are adopting", it's a nothingburger to me. Maybe Putin will introduce the Genocoin in 2030 for arms trade but a common currency replacing the rouble, yuan and others is as likely as Xi becoming the emperor of BRICS.
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Apr 1, 2023 11:13
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Apr 1, 2023 17:34
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cinci zoo sniper posted:The collateral casualty count is going up so far, from 6 in Fatherboxx's tweet to 15 as per BBC's latest. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65155075 I find it interesting that it happened in St.Pete, Putin's home turf. Not that it matters per say, but the boss man will doubtlessly pay attention to this and I can see him using it as an excuse to crack down on dissidents. It could be a moment similar to the murder of Sergei Kirov in Leningrad, which led to Stalin's great purge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Sergei_Kirov
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Apr 2, 2023 18:02
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assassination of Tatarskiy like that? Big Z-blogger, sure, but he was hardly a superstar.
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It's why Zelensky refused to leave Kyiv in the early days of the war, the main victory objective is there. New attacks on Odesa were reported last night but no information about damages.
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Apr 4, 2023 07:13
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okay cinci you got me by surprise, I thought someone had haxored the Finn thread Now I'm just waiting for permission to have Erdogan dolls in demonstrations again, or if have to wait for Sweden to join first Nenonen fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 15:46
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Zat posted:They no doubt have one or two extra poles at hand but enough about East European janitors Ynglaur posted:Actually...not necessarily. Getting into an urban environment is often unfavorable to an attacker, but once inside, the attacker can often obtain rough parity in terms of casualties. Fights are often at very close ranges, so casualty rates for both attacker and defender can be quite high, and generally higher than fighting in more open terrain. For another angle, attacker needs a high density of troops in a densely built area because they need to cover so many keyhole positions with short and narrow lines of fire, because buildings require more troops to clear (and there are lots of buildings in a city) than a field or forest, and because tactical reserves need to remain closer to the lead units to react quickly enough to ambushes or counterattacks. More scattered forces tend to become separated and ineffective in urban operations. Higher density of forces comes with the cost of more casualties to indirect fire and ambushes, though. OTOH if the attacker scales back their infantry actions and both sides rely more on artillery and snipers, then casualty rates will naturally start approaching 1:1. Especially if the side with more experienced troops doesn't have enough shells to whack at every mole popping up in the area. So it could also be a sign of the intensity changing.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:31
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Kraftwerk posted:Is there any news about Ukraine switching their service rifles to NATO 5.56.mm variants or are they still using Soviet/Russian 5.45mm and these "millions of rounds" are being procured through some other means? It shouldn't be too difficult to convert manufacturing lines to make whatever rifle calibre ammo, it's not secret high tech or anything. And unlike with artillery shells there should be plenty of base capacity to source from.
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Apr 4, 2023 21:59
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Small White Dragon posted:Since we're talking about Finland, seems like there's been a significant shift in which party is control there. Does that affect anything? Not with regards to foreign or defence policy, which has always been a very consensus driven area in Finland. For example, even the biggest anti-EU party TF said beforehand that if they enter government coalition then they will not seek exit from EU even though it is their stated goal. Closing the borders from refugees and everyone else is more important them, but it's also unlikely that they would seek to harm themselves by turning against Ukrainians, especially as those are 'the right type' (wink wink nudge nudge). The same with austerity, defence won't get cuts and so there's also enough to give to Ukraine.
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Apr 5, 2023 03:30
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Also, how much ammo 23 million rounds are, really - how quickly is infantry expected to be spending normal bullets? Finnish combat ration for assault rifles is 6x30 rounds, so if we take this as an average consumption per fighter then you are able to equip 128 thousand men to go into combat once. Or a few brigades to participate in combat for a week once a day. But this is a very simplistic calculation, in reality you don't expect cooks and mortar men to fire their rifles a lot but front soldiers especially in urban combat will use a lot more ammunition. Then there's the US estimate from Vietnam war that it takes 50000 rounds to kill one enemy. If we use this assumption then that pile of ammo would be enough to kill... 460 Russian soldiers. Which makes more sense when you remember that it's the artillery that is the biggest killer in war, infantry's job is to find the enemy and pin them down so the big guns can hit them.
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Apr 5, 2023 09:26
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cinci zoo sniper posted:What do you mean by this? Looks like it might be his first state visit since the war started. He has made a state visit to Poland and also went there last year for a work visit.
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Apr 5, 2023 15:34
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boofhead posted:Didn't he also already make a visit to the US in december or is there something pedantic about it that made that and others also not state visits? State visits are pedantic, pompous and highly ceremonial. It might be characterized as the two heads of states (the host and the visitor) acting as the high priests of their national deities, declaring that the gods are content. On a normal working visit they can just say so without 21 gun salutes and other magical ceremonies.
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Apr 5, 2023 18:13
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See also how Trump was ever so eager to get invited to a full state visit to London because him riding a horse carriage to Buckingham to inspect the guards with the Queen herself would have been such great television.
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Apr 5, 2023 18:16
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Shocking I know, but there has been a fire at one of Russia's ministry of defense's buildings. https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/17459697 https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1643661569505517568
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Apr 5, 2023 18:49
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Fwiw Russian navy has already relocated its submarines out of Sevastopol, so there is probably little faith in their ability to keep it operational in the near future. Or at least the navy doesn't trust the army enough. This doesn't mean that the battle for Crimea would be easy, if Sevastopol becomes a Mariupol like battle then that would be awful. We will have to wait for the Ukrainian offensive to start to really tell what can be expected. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 07:09
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It's not one or two times that people with security clearances have forgotten their government laptop in a cab and with smartphones it's even more likely. There's many routes that it could have happened without being an intentional leak (whatever the motive) because people have super powers when it comes to information security idiotry.
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Apr 7, 2023 11:38
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James Bond on Her Minecraft's Discord Service
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Apr 7, 2023 19:14
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spankmeister posted:At this point I'm unsure if that now-deleted MrLuca account was genuine, or a troll. I think it's because I'm clumsy I try not to talk too loud Maybe it's because I'm crazy I try not to act too proud Has anyone anywhere officially commented on this?
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Apr 7, 2023 20:08
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Incidentally colloquial "oon ines" would have worked by avoiding the ä and also be more credible, but it wouldn't have been understandable to anyone else even with automatic translation because it's an anglism (English in with the Finnish -essä suffix shortened to -es) and a tautology as well.
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Apr 7, 2023 21:04
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Ynglaur posted:This should be the thread title. Assuming Russia didn't have insider access for that level info already and depends on N-word Shaker Central Discord channel for leaks. Which is possible, but they have spent decades building networks within Ukrainian and western military and intelligence communities. But it's anyway not a good sign if Notch has access to your secret documents.
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Apr 8, 2023 00:26
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In weird news, the Wagner defector who escaped to Norway Andrei Medvedev has been arrested by Swedish police. According to his own words he went to Sweden to buy cheap cigarettes (Norway is way expensive) but missed the bus and tried to walk back. As an asylum seeker he is not allowed to leave Norway even though there are no passport checks between Nordic countries. https://www.dn.se/sverige/rysk-wagneravhoppare-togs-av-svensk-polis-utanfor-goteborg/
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Apr 8, 2023 00:38
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Like how do you cross the border over a partly frozen river from Russia to a NATO country but then get caught between Sweden and Norway
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Apr 8, 2023 00:41
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I really think it's just this indeed, alcoholism fuelling his attempts to re-/build reputation with the hardliners in the Kremlin circles. Speaking of which, according to Telegraph (YES, I KNOW) Twitter has recently removed the algorithm restrictions it put on Russian government accounts one year ago. Which is good for freedom of speech, I'm sure. Twitter has also been blocking access to Canadian critics of PM Modi from India so that should also be the next logical step for critics of Putin. https://kyivindependent.com/telegraph-twitter-lifts-restriction-on-putins-official-account/
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Apr 8, 2023 18:19
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Kavros posted:I feel like when he was president he was ... probably something of an employee Would you say... servant of I think of him more as an influencer or hype man these days. Or court jester. Kind of like Zhirinovsky was back in the good days. Actually I had to remind myself that Zhiri has been dead for a whole year and two days!
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Apr 8, 2023 20:08
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Despite all his failings Medvedev is still in my Top 3 of Russian presidents.
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Apr 9, 2023 05:34
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I don't think the office of president even existed then, so no
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Apr 9, 2023 07:07
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Hannibal Rex posted:This New York Times article goes into some detail about the air defense situation, but it also includes screenshots of leaked documents, so it may not be safe for some. I don't think you will end up in Guantanamo Bay for reading NY Times. If Ukraine gets more Patriots then that would help the stocks last that much longer. Finland would have Buk's that have been removed from use, but I don't know if they're still good (but it would be better than nothing even if a couple of them misfired) and there might be an issue with getting a re-export permit from the country that sold them to us...
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Apr 10, 2023 11:01
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Charlz Guybon posted:Even if it's published in one of the nation's largest newspapers like the New York Times or Washington Post? To prosecute someone they would have to admit that they themselves have read the leaked materials in NYT!
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Apr 10, 2023 15:03
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:It’s a bit None really. You wouldn't leak so many documents straight to the Minecraft Discord servers or 4chan, you would just approach some WaPo journalist and tell them what to write. And the documents cover more than just Ukraine.
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Apr 11, 2023 09:26
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, but any chance the leak on Ukrainian weakness was intentional to manage expectations, both in terms of western public support and Russian defensive preparation?
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cr0y posted:Store everything forever and find a use for it later. This is literally how data is treated everywhere today. This is also how Russia treats its tanks.
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Apr 12, 2023 16:09
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Willo567 posted:How come it's expected that it won't be as big of a gain as Kherson or Kharkiv was despite Ukraine now having western tanks? Tanks are not that important. Artillery is still the queen of battlefield and the relative shortage of shells is going to hamper any large operations. Lack of air superiority doesn't make this any better, that's the preferred method of USA. Russia has also held the initiative so far and we don't know how much reserves Ukraine has had to deploy to support Bakhmut and other vulnerable areas that are not going to be fresh for the new offensive.
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Apr 13, 2023 03:39
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T-55 is also a strange choice because it doesn't have an autoloader, so you need four man crews. An increase of a few hundred personnel is a drop in the sea, but it is nevertheless a detour from prevailing doctrine and organisation of Russian tank forces. I'm half expecting that they follow the current regulations and don't provide any MRE's to the loaders because it says in the papers that a tank company has 10 T-72's á 3 men so 30 mouths to feed. The regulations are not wrong! 
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Apr 14, 2023 03:52
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Jethro posted:It's not like a loader is really required anyway. They're really only useful if you're in a tank battle, which a T-55 isn't suitable for even in this war. For the afore mentioned semi-spg use, the gunner or commander can probably do just fine loading. It's not even the most complicated bit. You could go without a loader, but in the time you teach someone to handle the controls of other parts you can also train the fourth guy. But do they have any experts in maintenance of T-55 or T-62? Probably not too many, and the ones they had are probably needed more in the process of rehauling mothballed tanks into front use. So when some old tank part breaks or the engine starts behaving strangely, it's more likely that the vehicle will be out of order for a long time.
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Apr 15, 2023 05:28
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:The old "diesel douses the flames" doesn't work. Heat, certain sabot rounds, and some explosive rounds can autoignite diesel. There's a big difference between your dad doing the "extinguishing a cigarette in a cup of diesel" trick and the chemical reaction of modern anti-tank rounds striking a steel hull and autoigniting all of the materials inside of an eighty year old design. That was always a myth, tbh. It was apparently popularised in the 1970 film Patton where it was claimed that German tanks ran on diesel and American tanks on gasoline, which made them prone to catch fire. In reality German tanks, such as the Tiger, had gasoline engines. There were gasoline and diesel variants of Sherman, iirc the diesel ones went to the Pacific and Russia. T-34 ran on diesel. The anti-armour weapons used in WW2 were totally sufficient at creating enough heat at penetration to ignite diesel. I'm sure there were marginal cases in which diesel wouldn't have ignited but petrol did, but WW2 tanks had already so much armour that anything that was used to penetrate them had to carry a lot of energy, be it kinetic or chemical.
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Apr 16, 2023 09:40
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Poland and Hungary have blocked imports of cheap Ukrainian grain and food imports as local farmers can't compete with the prices. Part of the problem is logistics, EU really should invest in https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-government-bans-grain-food-imports-ukraine-2023-04-15/
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Apr 16, 2023 11:44
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Keisari posted:Is the Kola peninsula and East Karelia etc assigned to Finland? If so, lmao. Yeah, there's also a FGR (Federal Republic of Germany) sphere in Kaliningrad/East Prussia and K is for Kitai/China. RF is Russian Federation (how gracious)and down south the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_Republic_of_Ichkeria Oh, I missed that the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin are Japanese now. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 20:59
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Blut posted:36 turning 37 seems extremely young for a military intelligence chief. Thats what, about a captain or major level in most armies? First Euromaidan and then the Crimea thing discredited a lot of the older staff. Also Zelensky was just 41 when he got into the job, he probably communicates better with that sort of guy than with some former colleague of Putin.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:48
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https://twitter.com/GazetaRu/status/1648010956453060630 A Russian handball champion fell from an 8th floor window  while connection to the war is undeterminable, I thought that it is interesting as part of the wider phenomenon.
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Apr 18, 2023 07:15
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Prigozhin seems to have been to Drunk Dmitry's bottle and proposed to have 500 Finnish soldiers vs 500 Wagner mercs to see who's who
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Apr 19, 2023 07:26
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
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Libluini posted:By my count, this makes 2 of these extremely expensive and very new systems in Ukrainian hands, and zero in German hands as the German Bundeswehr couldn't fully introduce the system themselves yet. Our government coldly calculates the Ukrainian forces need them more than us, and since it takes like 3 months for each system to be manufactured, our entire production currently goes to defend Ukraine instead of to the Bundeswehr. German procurement! Until the war ends or production speeds up, I'm willing to bet all future IRIS-Ts will also become Ukrainian weapons while the Bundeswehr has to sit there and wait. Ukraine should offer to train German forces to use them once they start getting some, as a gesture of good will.
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Apr 19, 2023 15:36
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