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hcrof

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Everything posted by hcrof

  1. I'll bite... Similar to 1916, both sides are exhausted but still swinging. Both sides think they can win and noone has proposed a solution that is remotely acceptable to both sides. Russia wants a divided and submissive Ukraine with a puppet government in power. Ukraine wants to return to 1991 borders and a substantial security guarantee to prevent Russia from invading again. Those are totally incompatible positions so they keep fighting. In WW1 the central powers were blockaded until they were unable to keep fighting. It took another 2 years. That is likely how this war will end. If the West allows Ukraine to lose then pax Americana is over and we return to the bad old days, except now we have nukes. So we need to make sure they don't lose. It really as simple as that.
  2. I don't disagree about the 1916 analogy but how do you think the warring sides would have made peace in 1916? Under what terms? And who would enforce them? Edit: and wasn't the war being fought in french and russian territory in 1916 due to rapid early advances by the central powers? And who won in the end?
  3. Literally the only "evidence" they have is a picture of a submarine with a tarpaulin on top. That's it. The best part is that "Liz Truss disappeared for three days" like she personally swam over and blew up the pipe. This is getting desperate...
  4. Something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAUL_(shotgun)
  5. You make it sound like the border is a binary issue, which just plays into extremist talking points: "Biden wants millions of brown trans rapists to cross the border because he is an evil person who hates white America - trump would shut it all down" Vs "The fashists want to shoot Mexicans on sight so the solution is to not come up with any solution to the border because if bad people want something we should do the opposite " Not helpful.
  6. To be honest an armoured recovery vehicle is probably more useful to the Russians than another tank at this point (yes I called a BMPT a tank, the purists are all clutching their pearls right now...)
  7. I wonder if precision artillery rounds like Excalibur are going to get rarer - a drone can do the same job for a tiny fraction of the price. But dumb artillery, especially mortars, will be around for a while.
  8. 1:3 is the numbers/combat power required for a successful attack. It is not supposed to be the expected casualties.
  9. I think the problem here is that 2 years into the war Ukraine still only has a handful of brigades who actually fight. The line units and TD formations have not been developed into fighting units and trusted with hot areas of the front. I wonder if our Ukrainian friends can confirm my my suspicions? And if this is the case, why?
  10. All good points, I also wonder whether going straight at the ship leaves a wake which is easy to see in the dark. By manoeuvring erratically the wake will be obscured by waves and so the drone will be hard to spot, even with image intensifiers.
  11. I have noticed that sea drones tend to have a very odd attack pattern where they never go in straight lines and also attack one-by-one. This video shows drones almost making 90degree turns only a few hundred meters from its target. It looks inefficient but it clearly works, does anyone know more?
  12. I don't think this actually responds to what I said. Rather than derail this thread however, I will direct you to this discussion which I think sets out my position better than I could: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cr2ly/why_would_france_think_that_something_like_the/
  13. But the Maginot line worked exactly as intended. It allowed France to man it's German border with lightly armed reservists and concentrate it's best troops against the actual location of the German attack. Their defeat in 1940 was due to other factors which we don't need to discuss in detail here.
  14. I don't want to defend the guy, and would never watch his show, but didn't he work for fox news for years? You would have thought he would remember to come prepared, even if he was planning an easy interview.
  15. Most things people consider AI right now, from self driving cars to chatGPT is almost as hard to understand as giving someone a brain scan to ask why they like the colour pink. The code is simpler than you would think, but the "thought process" is almost totally opaque. A major area of AI research right now is trying to get it to explain why it did stuff in a way we understand
  16. It seems that at least some Russians have come to similar conclusions about war as this forum: https://www.armystandard.ru/news/2024129114-TnO1s.html No comment really, except that we should not stereotype the Russian general staff as a bunch of drunks and incompetents stuck in the soviet past. They are learning, even if implementation is the hard part, not theory.
  17. I have seen British troops train with ladders, which can also be used as bridges across an alley. Not saying I would volunteer mind, I would prefer the baseball sized boom-drones going in first. Also, wasn't black hornet developed for urban warfare, to check round corners and in buildings for ambushes and booby traps?
  18. I also believe that coming in from the top flushes the enemy into the street... Where you have a pre-planned kill zone.
  19. Also, I imagine that it would not be immediately obvious you are under fire too since there would be no bullet crack (a faint pop and a burning smell maybe? Maybe nothing if the impact is far behind you) You would probably get a second shot in before the enemy understood they were a target (especially if you miss).
  20. On the topic of mobilization and Ukrainian civil society.
  21. I think a big difference here is that a tiny country like Serbia had no hope to resist US airstrikes. It was effectively a form of gunboat diplomacy, where a great power can coerce a smaller one because of the overwhelming power difference. Where the two powers are more equal, such as in WW2 or now, bombing as a form of coercion will be counterproductive since the victim of the bombing simply wants to get revenge. This goes double when Russia perceives itself as the stronger power. I would suggest Ukraines best strategy is to bomb targets specifically to cause divisions in society, such as oligarchs homes like last year or symbolic targets. Making a few towns go dark and shutting down major airports etc would also cause general irritation at the war, without the same anger as killing civilians.
  22. Based on the news this morning I guess we will see whether Ukraine will follow through on it's threats to Russian infrastructure or not. Personally I wouldn't mind a few Russian towns going dark but I really don't think Ukraine is ready to do that yet.
  23. Do we/Russia know for sure Ukraine can follow through on those threats? I have seen lots of talk about Ukrainian shahed equivalents but not a lot of hard numbers and effectiveness.
  24. I really don't think Russia is dissuaded by threats like that. A combination of poor information supplied to decision makers and hubris would means the threat has to be almost nuclear before they will be dissuaded. I just think the whole infrastructure campaign didn't work well last year and the defences in Ukraine only got better, so they are trying to rebuild their stockpiles of missiles for something else.
  25. If this peace offer from Putin on current front lines is genuine it certainly explains why the Russians are so keen to push Ukraine out of avdiivka and the dneipr salient at any cost. Those two areas would be serious problems in a 2015- style semi frozen conflict or even a Korea style armistice. That also explains why it is so important for Ukraine to keep them and not retreat, even if it means taking losses.
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