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Strategic and tactical realities in CMBS


H1nd

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Here's a question. So a few days ago Ukraine states that it has spotted Russian forces crossing the border and heading to Luhansk. A few days later the Associated Press spots brand new tanks, GRAD launchers, and APCs, with perfect paint, moving in the area. Then there's a huge fight against Checkpoint 31 by "well disciplined forces" that take the Chekpoint within hours, despite many failed attempts to take it before.

Russians, including some on this Forum, have said that the Ukrainians use the claim of "Russia forces" as an excuse for losing battles. It's pretty cool that the Ukrainians are able to predict 2-3 days ahead which battles are going to start, where, and that they're going to lose them. So how do these amazing Ukrainians do it?!? I don't know why they aren't sitting at home investing in the stock market instead of fighting a war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/russia-says-its-helping-restore-cease-fire-in-ukraine.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Steve

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I don't think I understand the hybrid scenario, could you elaborate?

As to option 1, I wouldn't count on that. The west might very well call Russia's bluff and back Ukraine financially. There are members of the US congress pushing for lethal aid. I don't think it would be a stretch to see them push a financial package to keep Ukraine in the fight. Germany has unilaterally already extended additional financial aid.

Using the able men from people who originate from Donbas. Considering the number of refugees that went to Russia in summer it is not impossible for Russia and pro Russian forces to rise sufficient numbers of pro Russian volunteers.

Well what kind of finances are we talking about?

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I haven't finished reading the whole thread. I'm on page 25 and it's 2:45am, I doubt I'll finish reading this tonight.

 

I just wanted to see if everyone was aware, VICE News has been covering the war in Ukraine from the very beginning, with a series of dispatches titled "Russian Roulette".

 

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw613M86o5o5zqF6WJR8zuC7Uwyv76h7R

 

Anyone who is looking for an independent, alternative viewpoint of the events in Ukraine might start here.

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Steve, how about I use statistical data? Which economical parameters do you wish to know?

I have access to raw statistical data from Moscow State University database, it is at least on par with the Rosstat.

It's simple. Tally up what Russia needs to operate for the next year, including it's critical state controlled businesses, and subtract it from what it has available. I did this really quickly...

Russian data says that Russian companies have $600b in foreign debt. I don't remember what portion of it is due this year, but IIRC it is around $116b. Do you have a better figure?

Russian banks need roughly $55b to stay liquid.

Russia's government owes a $50b penalty for the illegal seizure of Yukos assets.

The cost of the pipeline to China is said to be about $75b.

The cost of the bridge over Kerch was estimated to be in the $40b range (and no Russian company will touch it with a 10m pole so far).

Turkish Stream is estimated to be about $10b for Russia's share.

Possible (current) Russian budget deficit around $15b

Unknown amount for more currency support.

I don't know how much things like the pension fund have been shorted, but that's a longer term problem.

Russia has about $380b in reserves currently unspent. Given that it is running a deficit, this number is not going to grow.

Some quick math is that the balance shows $361 allocated. And this is just the stuff I've thought of. I'm sure I haven't thought of everything ;)

Here are some things I found using Google very quickly.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/12/news/economy/russia-ruble-bankruptcies/

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/external-debt

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/business/international/russia-presses-ahead-with-plan-for-gas-pipeline-to-turkey.html

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/external-debt

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-19/russia-braces-for-widening-deficit-as-oil-plunge-starves-budget.html

Steve

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I didn't say US is a horrible place to live now. Nope. There is quite a high level of life there. Higher than in Russia for sure The point actually is that it's not the most democratic/free country in the world how US likes to present itself. However ordinary people don't care about democracy that much. They care about level of life (job, salaries, medicine, roads e.t.c.) and don't really care whether goverment watching them or not even if it breaks their right for private life e.t.c. Snowden showed US people that goverment watching them and what happened? Goverment was retired? Some new laws were implemented to prevent goverment from this? Nothing happened in fact. Ordinary people don't really care about freedom.   Btw can you explain why US is at the 1st place in the world for the number of people kept in prisons per 100 000 of it's population. Russia is at the 10 place in this rating for example. Are there so many criminals in US or are US laws so severe or what? I personally have no exact idea but it makes me think bad about US justice though Russian justice is bad either I won't deny it.

 

For your note I don't belive russian state media and don't usually read\watch them. The same I actually don't belive US or other state medias cause they all lie more or less. I make my conclusions on many sources of information and I had an oportunity to visit various countries (China, US, EU ) and talk to people from these countries directly. You probably will be shocked but I never voted for Putin and don't support his internal policy while I find his external policy reasonable more or less.

It's not like I hate US or EU either, I just say about them here what I see in their actions without being blinded by US/EU propaganda (yes, western countries also has propaganda). I see that US nor tries to bring some real democracy anywhere, it just uses people dissatisfaction in various countries to change goverments there in profit of US first of all. I won't call US an evill empire for it however. I think the world is a cruel place and all countries in the world are fighting for their own interests except those that chosen a role of US sattelite already and betray their own interests in profit of US.

Steve, I hoped to get an answer from a native american on why US goverment keeps so many citizens in prisons? I am just puzzled with this fact. Is it how true democracy functions? You ignored this question so you don't know the answer (it's ok you may not know) or US goverment will prosecute you if you tell me the truth?

Edited by Rusknight
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BlackMoria and BlackAlpha,

 

As soon as I read the initial post, I immediately got that this was apparently nerve agent at work, especially after reading the OSCE press release. To my mind, and I used to deal with NBC (explicit NBC protection requirements for pilot and plane in Advanced Tactical Fighter RFP, and I was the NBC guy) issues during my military analyst days, those are classic nerve agent indicators. Given the way the report is written, though not explicitly stated, we are, in my opinion, based on my UNCLASSIFIED and CLASSIFIED knowledge of such things, and having had a near hospitalization dose of lambda-cyhalothrin (active ingedient in HOT SHOT™ ant and roach killer), a synthetic pyrethrin, because my idiot apartment mate went hog wild with the stuff (intended only for use in back of cupboards, behind fridges and such) in our new bug infested apartment (workers apparently ate there and left food debris right before we moved in), it's my assessment that what OSCE reported is all but dead certain to be a nerve agent attack. See, for example, the description of the effects of higher dose nerve agents here. Note also what it says about rapid onset of symptoms when agent entry is respiratory and the repeated references to muscle spasms. Uncontrolled muscle spasms, such as those clearly seen in the incapacitated Ukrainian troops reported by OSCE, are the hallmark of nerve agent poisoning.

 

Were it some sort of disabling respiratory distress from battlefield smoke and dust, then we would expect lots of other such incidents in an area where there's been heavy combat time and again. From what I can tell, there haven't been any other mass incidents like this. If Russia or anyone else is supplying nerve agents to the Russian proxy fighters and outright Russian invaders of Ukraine, then this needs to be thoroughly publicly exposed forthwith. And the international community needs to come down hard on Russia and/or any person, NGO, nation or group supplying such a horrible weapon. Not just because of what it means in the Ukraine War, but because it sets, if not exposed and left unchallenged, an extremely dangerous precedent of potentially global impact.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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Steve, you pile up state and corporate numbers together, without knowing about corporate reserves for example.

Morever you pile up the costs in rubles and in the USDs together, which again is faulty.

However I think that I won't reply into this thread anymore, as it went down the political OT route, the one you have said it won't go. If you wish to continue this discussion then please split this OT stuff into a new thread or do so in private.

P.s. actually what you could do is to brand this thread as political OT, then it would make sense.

Edited by ikalugin
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Steve,

 

I'm thoroughly familiar with aircraft development woes, program cancellations, cost overruns and the like. Was reading Dad's aerospace and military tech magazines from childhood, in fact, What I'm learning about the F-35 is, frankly, not worrisome, but downright scary. The critical attributes for a combat aircraft in modern air warfare simply aren't there. Consider.

 

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/07/14/pentagons-big-budget-f-35-fighter-cant-turn-cant-climb-cant-run/

 

Fair Use

 

"All that thrust results in extreme levels of stress on engine components. It’s no surprise, then, that the F-35 frequently suffers engine malfunctions. Even with that 20 tons of thrust, the new radar-dodging plane is still sluggish. The F-35 “is a dog … overweight and underpowered,” according to Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight in Washington.

In 2008, two analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California think-tank that works closely with the military, programmed a computer simulation to test out the F-35′s fighting ability in a hypothetical air war with China. The results were startling.

“The F-35 is double-inferior,” John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue concluded in their written summary of the war game, later leaked to the press. The new plane “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run,” they warned."

 

And just think--the F-35 Lightning II is intended to pretty much replace all US fighters and fighter bombers (blurry distinction), with the major exception of the limited numbers of F-22A Raptors! And RAND is not what any rational person could call antimilitary. Technical problems, program delays, cost overruns and such go with the territory, but if the end result is a lousy and very expensive warplane--which also evidently can't handle warm fuel being loaded into it.. And only two days ago, Business Insider reported the F-35 has major software issues which fundamentally affect the ability of the pilot to electronically, and probably electro-optically, see, hear and fight. Worse, the problems are expected to degrade performance of the plane when it goes operational. I do agree that US media coverage of military boondoggles and failures is vastly better than in any number of foreign countries, which certainly include Russia. Sometimes, a major program even gets cancelled, such as the disastrous across the board black AX Navy Stealth aircraft program in the US, but here, at least, it's rare. One of the ways North American Rockwell made sure the B-1B made it into mass production was to arrange to have parts made in practically every state, making it all but bulletproof from political attack. The US has no monopoly on weapon design failures, but the sad reality is that such things, because of the scope and scale of US military power, not to mention a great deal of FMS, can well have strategic impact.

 

That picture of the Ukrainian soldiers in combat at the link you provided reminds me of similar images and film shot of GIs doing the same, but much earlier during the Battle of the Bulge. I'm guessing that in CMBS, infantry doing stuff like that would have poor saving throws if fired upon!

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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Apparently U.S. forces will be "vacationing" in Ukraine this Spring:

Are you seriously comparing this public statement of the US to the lies of no involvement from Russia? 

 

They said they are doing it several times so far

They stated the reason

They stated when and how many

They said it before it actually happened and not as a response to media backlash

 

 

Your mentioned vacationers are the actual official response from the Russian Federation about it's obvious involvement, talk about being a transparent and honest government.

Edited by Kraft
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“The F-35 is double-inferior,” John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue concluded in their written summary of the war game, later leaked to the press. The new plane “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run,” they warned."

 

 

Does that even matter? The link in the quote doesn't work. Any idea how they came to the conclusion that the Chinese would supposedly win? Did they out-range the Americans with better missiles and then ran? Did the stealth not make any difference? Is the Chinese stealth better, making American missiles ineffective? I don't get it.

Edited by BlackAlpha
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Using the able men from people who originate from Donbas. Considering the number of refugees that went to Russia in summer it is not impossible for Russia and pro Russian forces to rise sufficient numbers of pro Russian volunteers.

Well what kind of finances are we talking about?

Well considering the complaints coming from separatist leadership, recruiting has been an abysmal failure so I don't see why suddenly they are going to volunteer now.

Regarding finances, simply an aid package. The U.S. has the capability to float money to the ukrainian govt to meet their debt payments and keep the economy going. It would have to be sizable and there would likely be some complaining in the US, but the republicans are in power in congress and they were pushing Obama to provide lethal aid when he would prefer not to. I think he would support a financial aid package if congress were to push that through so now you have both parties in the US committing to it. Look at the amount of money the US dumped into Iraq, we are talking trillions. The only impediment would be Ukraine really needs to fix its transparency and corruption issues. It is making progress, but needs to do more.

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Can anyone tell me the likelihood of a potential artillery provocateur from the russians in this case? I find it unlikely but there might have been real life cases in other events in history, I dunno.

 

Oh and the servicemen here have their faces censored at 1:15 for some reason...

 

Edited by Schmoly War
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Can anyone tell me the likelihood of a potential artillery provocateur from the russians in this case?

Yes, sure it's evil russians bombing  Donetsk for several months already almost daily while Ukranian army has nothing to do with it. Ask Psaki about it, she will tell you the truth.

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Yes, sure it's evil russians bombing  Donetsk for several months already almost daily while Ukranian army has nothing to do with it. Ask Psaki about it, she will tell you the truth.

Yeah I dont buy it either of course, but Im curious to why the ukranians would even attempt to put such lofty claims forward. Do they draw exanples from other events? 

 

They pretty much lied or misrepresented what was going on the airport. We're not talking about a tactical retreat here. I think their bloggers and news people need a reality check.

Edited by Schmoly War
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Well I haven't seen those aid efforts, especially not on the scale that Ukraine would need to rebuild the economy.

P.s. I don't read everything in this thread anymore, so if you wish me to reply to something specific please message me about that directly.

Edited by ikalugin
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Yeah I dont buy it either of course, but Im curious to why the ukranians would even attempt to put such lofty claims forward. Do they draw exanples from other events? 

It's a nature of information warfare. It doesn't really matter how reasonable and believable statements you make just repeat them again and again and if you have enough media resources many people will belive that it's the truth. So if you bombing your enemy for several months just say that it's enemy bombing himself all this time and people will finally agree with you - sure, it's logical they bombing themselfs again and again it's their never-ending provocation.

Edited by Rusknight
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