hcrof

Since this discussion doesn't seem to be stopping I want to say that both sides need to cut each other some slack. What consenting adults do with each other is none of my business and if my friends or family have a same-sex relationship it does not harm me in any way. On the other hand some people are uncomfortable with that and they are not going to change their mind by your disapproval. They just need time and space to realise the whole country isn't going to burn down because some man decides to wear a dress or something.

Just found this thread. The Ukrainian government has been able to put off difficult decisions for too long because of the stalemate at the front. It's not like the russian narrative of the male population has been emptied from the country, it's more like trench warfare is dangerous and unglamorous so no-one wants to do it. But there isn't an existential sense of crisis in the country so the can is kicked down the road. If the Russians actually made meaningful gains I wouldn't be surprised if there was a rush to the recruitment offices.

Quality content as always from Anders Puck Nielsen

Russia is spending over 6% of it's GDP on the military right now, which is a very heavy burden. A handful of NATO countries spent a comparable amount of money in Afghanistan every year for 20 years without much effort. I have not got the numbers to hand but NATO is not breaking a sweat right now financially, so even if big players like the US pulled out (doubtful, even with trump in charge IMO) they still have the resources to keep going. In a few years industry will catch up to the financing and then NATO can supply Ukraine indefinitely.

Depends on if you isolate the war away from the west's support of Ukraine. Lots of Russia supporters don't/can't grasp that even if Ukraine can't win outright, it won't lose as long a even a few western countries keep the flow of supplies going. I don't think Russia has a plan for that.

Yeah, he obviously doesn't know the history of Afghanistan or Czechoslovakia/Hungary or he would be making that comparison not Iraq 2003. He kinda says that if war was a computer game you could save-scum your way to a flawless victory against impossible odds. But he doesn't say how. War is about mistakes - you can't run a "what if" scenario based on your side running a flawless campaign with perfect knowledge of both thr enemy and yourself

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/04/04/pro-kremlin-telegram-channels-share-propaganda-video-featuring-u-s-city-councilor-who-joined-russian-army-after-fleeing-child-pornography-charges No suprise that he is on the run from US law enforcement...

Agreed. The wider the radius Ukraine can strike, the area Russia needs to cover with air defence goes up by that number squared. If nothing else it is an expensive distraction having to defend such an enormous area. It is a puzzle to me why Ukraine chooses not to increase the number of strikes. Maybe they think that money is better spent elsewhere, maybe they don't want to mobilise russian society, or maybe the Americans told them not to do it. I am sure we will find out in time...

I'm not sure actually, I don't think production of those things requires much sophisticated equipment so I imagine production could begin again fairly soon (6 weeks?) unfortunately. But as a cheap demonstration it is still a valuable strike.

I am going to try one more time here... Your posts come off sounding extremely confused. You make multiple statements without any logical connection between them and you seem to know they are controversial but you do not back them up with evidence. You keep citing Plato's cave but in a way that sounds like you are copying what someone else said without understanding it. Please offer simple and direct answers to people's questions. Imagine you are a professional writing a report for a client. You are not going to persuade anyone with long, poorly focused posts with no evidence. Because my finger is hovering over the ignore button and you only have yourself to blame.

Sorry but can you explain in less than one paragraph what point or question you are trying to make here? I can't understand any of your posts.

Consider that the USA is not the only country in the world. No matter how little you trust your own government how about the governments of most of Europe? Even the French and Germans (Evan neutral Switzerland!!), who were very critical of the war in Iraq are fully onboard supporting Ukraine, supplying more aid per capita than the USA. That suggests that the war is real and Ukraine is a partner who can be worked with. Remember the Dutch and Germans complaining about corruption during the eurozone crisis? Not so much with Ukraine (although realistically it does exist)

relevant to the discussion about bunkers. These are probably a good tradeoff between cost and effectiveness - no wonder they are the ones getting shown off on camera! You can always dig deeper or use stronger designs (like those bunkers on the beaches of Normandy, or the Maginot line), but at some point you hit diminishing returns. Note that I am not a military engineer so my opinion on where that point is means nothing!

Haiduk, do you have information on how bad the recent strike on the power grid was? Apparently the whole of Kharkiv was without power, and some cities too? Is this worse than before?

What about one of these: https://www.oxfordplastics.com/en-gb/products/road-plates-and-trench-covers?creative=691002070264&keyword=road plate&matchtype=p&network=g&device=m&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwte-vBhBFEiwAQSv_xe3vbGdg50Rqi9Uihv0Sm1aYi4058J_7THowlj6MwRzeDoB-LTA_YxoCUbUQAvD_BwE It certainly won't stop a bullet (bullets are really good at penetrating stuff!) but will support enough soil to do so and is super quick to install. But it would remain a niche use case since wood is cheaper and less flammable...

Tbh a plastic curtain like they use in industrial fridges would stop an FPV better than EW! Combine that with a right angled corner like you said and you will be pretty safe.

Ok so if we are trying to build bunkers under active fire from the enemy that does change the equation somewhat. But how bad is it? If you can't even bring in an excavator then it really limits your options and while throwing money at engineering problems often solves them (Kevlar sandbags?) I am not sure Ukraine has that kind of budget! If I was in that situation I would be looking to pack something like this, or this on my truck and use it to support a lot of soil as overhead cover in a hand-dug trench. But it won't be nearly as strong as a concrete bunker since a near miss will collapse the walls more easily and a direct hit is game over even for a smaller round.

I've seen a lot of different designs tbh. The panalised system looks better from my armchair thousands of miles away but local supply chain issues may make other designs better in some cases. On the other hand, I have read reports that in many cases local commanders are just doing what they think is best, with limited engineering expertise to draw on so some designs may be wasteful of resources or just not very good.

Remember plastic is very flammable so not good in combat - you would need a different material. Buildings are BIG and use a lot of material, so 3d printing is not going to beat mass production economically except for some quite specialised use cases. (This is a big subject that I have studied but I don't want to go OT) I am no expert on Kevlar but in construction carbon fibre is sometimes used - the downsides are that 1) steel offers most of the performance and a fraction of the price and 2) it burns. It ends up used in very specialised cases only. The other reason why steel is almost always going to be best in "dynamic situations" is that it fails very gracefully by bending rather than snapping. Modern steels (even low grade construction steel) are really good and really cheap so very difficult to beat, especially if they are surrounded by concrete for fire protection and extra mass. Basically the "best" bunker for mass production is likely what we have already seen - factory made reinforced concrete panels, welded together on site then covered in soil. Cheap, quick to assemble and robust (at least for a few years before they start to rust due to sloppy construction)

The links are broken for me but I am very skeptical about building bunkers with 3d printing - and I say this as someone who designs structures, sometimes against explosions. If plastics are involved multiply that by 10.

Just to add to that, encryption adds latency (lag) to the signal. I understand FPV video signals are typically unencrypted analogue signals to minimise the latency, otherwise they get harder to control due to the delay from video input, processing, sending, display, human reaction time, input, sending, processing, motor reaction time etc. it all adds up.

Not sure about that - they say the government is illegitimate. They say that all russian speaking areas of Ukraine should be part of Russia. But I don't think they have ever claimed the whole country - all their maps of a future Ukraine show a small rump state centred on Kiev.

Relevent video for the previous sea drone conversation. Defending against them seems like a hard problem to solve, especially when you are in a peer conflict and you can't just be pumping out radiation all the time to try and spot drones. Having watched the video, I tried to think of solutions to the problem he described. A tethered observation drone might help, but quite easy to spot if it is emitting radar and less effective if it relies on passive measures. Sonar may be the solution but it limits your speed and is only really usable by high-end ships with quiet propulsion. Finally the defensive sea/air drone swarm may work but also limits your speed and is resource-intensive.

I don't think your argument really addresses the point here. Russia does not have to be as effective pound for pound as Ukraine, they can use more resources sustainably. So in a static situation they can use more shells than Ukraine so even if they are more wasteful the number of casualties may end up being the same. That is obviously not ideal for Ukraine - if both sides are just sitting in trenches taking 500 casualties a day then the war is not going to end any time soon.

Agreed that NATO can choose not to export, but that would badly damage their reputation and I would be surprised to see many countries following France's example. I guess the point is that NATO is not at war but Russia is, so NATO might have more potential but not use it. Also both sides are importing shells from 3rd countries (often under the table), and both sides use various calibres. In other words it is really complicated and I don't think counting production numbers alone is a very good proxy for how many shells will be fired by both sides this year. Thankfully the NATO numbers are finally going up at a faster rate than Russia's so hopefully Ukraine will be at least stable soon with regard to the artillery balance.