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JonS

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Everything posted by JonS

  1. Despite your effort to boil the ocean here I think we are in pointed agreement once again, albeit coming at it from different directions. If I read you correctly, you're saying that trying graft a western style military onto Afghanistan didn't work because their government wasn't compatible with that style of military. I agree with that, and if I'm understanding him correctly, so does @Kinophile. That is actually his main point, despite your effort to disagree with it. Anyhoo, I agree. However, in Afghanistan's case I think the original sin was trying to trying to give them a military that looked like some weird amalgam^ of western expeditionary-ish doctrines that was never going to work in their context. The Afghan people can obviously fight, really well and really effectively, when they fight in ways that suit them. In other words, like you, I think there was a mismatch between the civil/political milieu and the indigenous military forces in Afghanistan, but unlike you I think that effort should have gone into creating a military that fit that milieu, rather than trying to impose or import a political ideology that would have been able to support "our" way of fighting. Hopefully the relevance to Ukraine is obvious. And I think on that we definitely agree. ^ given the number and variety of different training teams from different nations they weren't even trying to adopt a single doctrine. Instead they had to try and make sense of all the doctrines at once.
  2. Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously. If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function. Is that about right? Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)
  3. Kinda weird that someone "just happened" to be videoing that particular plane, just at the moment the engine fell off, just before it flew behind obscuring terrain?
  4. Wikipedia suggests the Trent has the big number - 4 or 5 - about right. But whether it's 4 or 5 or 6 doesn't matter in some sense, since any of those numbers aren't enough to continuously cover two areas simultaneously. OTOH, if it's still 5 or 6 then the Rooskis do still have some redundancy (assuming they leave monitoring the rest of their border to purely ground-based radar) before gaps will start appearing in the coverage over eastern Ukraine.
  5. I mean ... war is basically a political discussion using pointy sticks, so, yes?
  6. Well, much better that than the money /actually/ going to the Russian armed forces As an aside - that shell looks sketchy as sh!t. Edit: as a second aside, this really isn't a specifically Russian behaviour. You see exactly the same thing after every natural disaster, and I doubt you'd have to do much scratching to find the same scam being worked supposedly for the Ukrainians. Basically: people suck. Really. Just the worst.
  7. On the friendly side, that's one of the roles of the unit signals officer. At the national level, there is an office which allocates broad frequency bands for things, generally in ranges in which the physics of the frequency band suit the application. So, there's a large chunk for commercial radio, a chuck for TV, a chunk for high capacity comms links, a chunk for airspace management, some for 3G, 4G, and 5G, some for consumer stuff like TV remotes and garage doors (yes they're low powered and not likely to interfere with anything else, but if they shared a freq with the local 100MW FM station ... well ... everyone's garage door will be opening every time Lady Gaga comes on rotation), a large chunk set aside for military use (although that's always under pressure from commercial operators), more chunks for the emergency services, wifi, satellite comms, etc etc. Then within each chunk, specific operators are allocated specific frequencies. For mil use, in the olden days the sigs officer of an AO will be given a band to work within, then he'd have to come up with a plan so that each battalion and company and squadron and battery operating in that AO had its own freq to work with, and a plan to move those freqs around every 24 hours or so to mess with enemy signals interception efforts. That's not so much of an issue with frequency hopping and digital comms - the new radios just sort of listen to everything that's within their band of interest, and know from the data packet headers which ones are 'theirs'. For EW, you can just dump noise at high power across multiple freqs, but obviously that messes with your own comms. So the EW wonks and the sigs guys will work together to leave gaps in the blanket through which friendly forces can communicate with each other. Generally those gaps will be in places the bad guys aren't likely to be using. So, for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan the gaps would NOT be at or near the freqs that 3G or 4G cellular networks use ... Meanwhile, in Ukraine, presumably the gaps aren't at the common COTS UAS Freqs, except when FF want to send one up. Generally, I would think that freq management along the front line in eastern Ukraine would be relatively simple. Since there's essentially no civilian activity there, then the entire EM spectrum is up for units to use. Further back the AD dudes would have to manage their freqs a bit more carefully given that there is still a full civilian economy in places like Kyiv and Odessa. But on the other hand they wouldn't generally have to worry too much about Russian jamming that far from the front. Edit: oh, and don't forget to leave some gaps for the zoomies.
  8. Frankly, I'm as shocked about this development as anybody.
  9. Because , as Bullethead used to say, it ain't over till a grunt sticks a flag on it. Drones are cool, and all, but like aircraft they can't seize *and*hold* terrain, regardless of season, weather or terrain.
  10. I've been thinking about this post most of the day, and keep coming back to "Neat. Now what?" Which got me thinking about how other step changes in military capability were handled. The two obvious ones that come to mind are tanks in WWII, and airpower during the Cold War. Now, clearly, in both cases they existed early, but they only really became effective/worrisome/"game-changing" some decades after their entree to the battlefield. For the infantry, in both cases, the response became basically the same: very small infantry units became fully capable of anti-ing the other thing, either anti-tank or anti-air. During WWII anti-tank rifles, bazookas, fausts, shrecks, Piats and hearty grenades gave platoons and sections an ability to defend against or attack against tanks, pretty explicitly at the detriment to the nominal role of the infantry, which was to oppose and defeat enemy infantry. That trend was significantly enhanced during second half of last century with things like RPGs and M-72s. This is at the point now where with weapons like Javelin tanks perhaps have more to fear from infantry than the vice versa, even though lugging Javelin around is a royal PITA especially for light infantry. The introduction of air power, and especially effective CAS, started us on the road to the fully illuminated battlefield, where nowhere is safe and to be seen is to die. During WWII the only real counter that the infantry had was to dig on, or hide, or both. But during the Cold War a lot of effort went into MANPADS, resulting in the Stinger in the 1980s and with other systems following soon after. Just like their anti tank weapons, lugging around anti-aircraft missiles is a PITA which detracts from the nominal role of engaging enemy infantry, not to mention the drain on budgets and training schedules. But on the other hand now every platoon and section is capable of destroying any tank or aircraft that wanders into it's little tactical AO. And once the air and armour battle is won - either locally or globally - then the rest is just mopping up. The degradation of the infantry platoon and section's ability in the infantry-battle doesn't really matter, since while that bit remains hard and unpleasant, it is incredibly harder and more unpleasant in the absence of either air or armoured support. So you can probably see where this is going. Assuming UAS remains in play (and why wouldn't it?), then the role of infantry platoons and sections will change again. Instead of being little nodes of anti-tank and anti-air goodness,with some residual anti-infantry capability, they will become little anti-UAS nodes, with the weapons, training, mindset and purpose to defeat enemy UAS in their local area, and also protect or project friendly UAS capability around themselves. If an enemy tank or aircraft turns up then the section or platoon mightn't be able to deal with it themselves, but they will be networked to someone who can - guns, missiles, friendly armour or air, or friendly UAS. And they'll still, you know, carry rifles. Mainly out of habit and tradition, as well as giving the NCOs something to inspect every day. But most of their weaponry, and sensors, and just the general claggage they're carting about will be geared towards winning the UAS fight, because winning that will mean that the rest is just mopping up. In other words, the infantry will be able to concentrate physically and cognitively on the UAS battle because it won't be their role any more to win the tank, infantry, or local airspace battle.
  11. I wonder how much fuel consumption of that ship was affected by the net. A loss of 1 knot might be ok. A loss of 1 knot AND a doubling of fuel consumption (and consequent wear and tear on the mechanicals) maybe not so much. OTOH, I suppose that still better than losing the ship.
  12. @Letter from Prague Launch sequence ~30mins Flight time ~ 3mins Sensor-shooter time ~??? If the SS time were even 2 hours, that's still 'quick' enough to hit a hide. It's just not feasibly practical to redeploy every 30 mins or so. I mean, in theory it could be done, but the himars crews would be wrecked inside 72hrs.
  13. Ok, but a lot of cargo ship hulls - including all tankers - ARE double skin and each layer is ~20mm giving ~40mm of spaced "armour equivalent" (although presumably they use a different grade of steel)
  14. This particular flavour of secret squirrel behaviour always amuses me. I have to assume the Russians already know what's in (or, as the case may be, not in) their tanks. Yes, yes; "protecting sources and methods", but I do have to wonder whether widely publicising that the Russian armed forces are already on a steep de-modernisation slope would deflect some of the "all is woe" narrative.
  15. Warships, especially the little ones, don't really have meaningfully "armoured" hulls anymore, do they? Strengthened, sure, so they can better deal with heavy weather and battle damage, but not armoured as such.
  16. If you really wanted Leos why did you not buy some after 2014? I mean - you had EIGHT YEARS! What were you doing, aside from sitting on your thumbs?
  17. I can imagine foreign forces taking over "border security duties" wherever the current front line matches the pre-2022 (or pre-2014) borders - like transnistria, belarus, and from belarus down to kharkiv. Somewhat similar to what the UN has been doing somewhat successfully with various missions on the borders of Israel for many decades now. That would; * free up a lot of ukrainian ground forces, * restrict russian options for missile routes, and * *really* secure those borders until or unless putin starts playing 'trip-wire chicken'. Slow-boil could also see foreign forces take over theatre-level ground-based air-defence
  18. Aren't the aussie Abrams just leased from the US? Edit: apparently not, they were purchased. Huh. Still, they'll need US approval before they can be handed over to a third party.
  19. That bit is pretty uncontroversial; imposing a sanctions regime means that theoretically no goods or services or money goes in to the target country and nothing (again, ideally) comes out. So the US loses a market for its exports, and also loses a source of cheap or otherwise desirable imports. That's at the very least disruptive, and likely to cause at least some damage in terms of missed opportunities. For example, take the economic pain and disruption a couple of winters ago when Germany abruptly stopped importing Russian gas. The gamble/assumption is that "your" economy can handle the disruption, and "theirs" cannot. Now, whether that is "really" hurting the US economy ... well, I mean, it's Swanson McNear. He couldn't tell you the current weather or the time right now without putting some dishonest spin on it. "Sure, it's sunny outside but it's going to rain this afternoon because Biden is old" or "it's just turned 11am but in only a few weeks it'll be midday - lunchtime! - when the Democrat's con of daylight savings starts! Having lunch while it's still the morning makes no sense!"
  20. That would be compelling, if only the last formal DOW were not over 80 years and many many conflicts - including the only one to rely on Article 5 - ago
  21. So, is this silly hypothetical sub from Russia, or is it unknown. Because right now all you have is Schrödinger's sub ... which might not even have been a sub, let alone a Russian one. And that isn't a good basis for anyone to be declaring war over.
  22. Well, yes. Is there somewhere else you think it should rest?
  23. In Putin's Russia, everyone puts in 110%. What's so hard to understand?
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