acrashb

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-combat-medics-life-saving-breakthroughs/32695540.html

 
 
 

So, natural right of nation to defend own culture and don't turn into "multicultural Babylon" to be gradually "swallowed" by newcomers is a sign of nazism? As for me this is a sign of nation health. 
You have wrong opinion about Ukrainians, I should say. We never will greeting hordes of non-european culture migrants here. Some Muslim communities live here historically, but they are minor, and they are more "secular Muslims", so they don't make problems for us

More signs of Russian stress:
"...Russia has likely moved strategic air defence systems from ... Kalingrad, to backfil recent losses..."
 

More signs of Russian stress:
"...Russia has likely moved strategic air defence systems from ... Kalingrad, to backfil recent losses..."
 

With this humility, you are doomed as ENGLISH nation. Just some dozen years will pass... Europeans lost a capability to defend own area of life. Endless compromisses, concessions, feel of guilt, "non-resistance to evil by force" according to Tolstoy... 

Maybe the best thing for Europe and NATO security would be if someone in the US got elected that decided to pull the US out. Then those countries would have to do a serious look at their militaries and actually get on the same page for their mutual security. Russia has proven that she is not the Soviet Union and it is doubtful they could ever get to that point, so there is no reason a united NATO of only European countries couldn't defend itself against Russian aggression as that is the only real threat to Europe.
Now I'm not saying I agree with it or that I would want to see that someone in that office, but after all the glaring deficiencies that have been shown by this conflict in both the militaries and the arms industries maybe it would be the kick start Europe needs to rely on itself and clean up some of the messes they have (not knocking on the Germans in this forum, but the German military and especially procurement could certainly use an overhaul to just name one). They would be criminally negligent not getting things straightened out after this anyway to stand on their own. All it takes is a full scale commitment to a war in the Pacific and the US would be of little help against Russia anyway, other than nuclear deterrent.

Speaking as one who lived through the “Red Scare” BS of “Tail Gunner Joe,” and not the history books, the opinions of many that he was right, doesn’t matter. His actions were absolutely wrong, and unconstitutional! The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution affirms not only freedom of speech, but also the freedom of association. It completely disgusts me when politicians (who swear an oath to “defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic), media, and individuals, decide the Constitution applies only to them and their beliefs and positions. The Constitution, and every Amendment to the Constitution must be treated as a whole and applies to everyone EQUALLY whether or not you like what it says, and every part of the Constitution MUST be afforded equal weight, no matter whether you like it or not!
 
I might not like what might result from the conforming to the constitutional requirements, but I must respect them!

Quod custodiet ipsos custodes?

A simple step that is a few years below 1984 would be to just block any and all political party "donations" coming from some unknown strongly moved spectator, that cares so ever deeply about <insert country> politics as to involve himself in their funding campaigns, while residing in russia. 

Very important article, do not miss it.

Meanwhile, drones continue their steady move towards being one of two things on the battlefield: drones, and targets.
"Drone pilots have become increasingly valuable—and are targets for both sides"
Note that Russia is learning too, and in some ways outpacing the UA - especially in EW to disrupt the final phase of an attack run.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/10/29/trenches-and-tech-on-ukraines-southern-front
 

If they are staying home while their nation is fighting for its life, and whining that Ukraine is losing this far into the war. They are cowards. Sorry, but that's the truth.

I am not sure if this is a bit or your headspace.
If it is a bit designed to somehow push us towards "more support before Ukrainian will fails" it really is a bad idea.  If the West starts to believe that Ukrainian will is buckling no matter what we do, the entire thing starts to look like a bad investment.  This will accelerate withdrawal of support not encourage it.
If this is real...well, the West cannot send crates of "will" over the border.  Neither does more money or sexier weapons create willpower; the first month of this war proved that in spades.  If Ukrainian willpower fails then it constitutes a decision by its people.  A coerced decision, but a decision one-the-less.  Ukraine becomes Southern Vietnam or the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, another lesson in how we cannot defend a place that refuses to defend itself.  If this is a reality in Ukrainian society then Russia was going to absorb Ukraine one day regardless of how this war turns out.  All we really did was buy time and make it expensive.
You live there so are much closer to the social coalface than I, but I really have not seen any clear indication of the collapse of Ukrainian will.  Are the training centers in NATO nations running out of people to train?  Are we seeing mass desertions?  Draft dodging happens in every war.  How systemic is it in Ukraine right now?  We do not see mass migrations or exodus from Ukraine.  National infrastructure failures?
Militarily...FFS there has been one tepid operational offensive that did not deliver as much as people were hoping for.  Hardly a reason to start waving the white flag of war.
Maybe you should go talk to someone, or try to take a break (tall ask, given your situation).  Having been in bad situations such as yours, even an hour of escapism can be helpful.
 

Ah, over-educated nihilistic liberal then.  No hippie would ever use the term "interminable".
I am a Canadian-centrist, which in the rest of the world (except Scandinavia) appears to be slightly left of Marx.
 

Umm, I don't know your lived experience, but mine teaches me that no sector of society -- any society -- is any more or less emotional and gullible than any other, overall.
Other than the benevolent, wise and rational philosopher rulers *I* voted for, of course. (Assuming I had in fact voted in the last 30 years)

Thanks, but not recent enough. I want to hear in his own words -- and since the war began -- not filtered through the lens of people who hate his guts for other reasons.
****
I mean, most people here know that I identify as 'conservative' (albeit that probably doesn't mean what you might think it does), and I utterly fail to see why any 'conservative' would favour Putin's insane delusions of Russian Manifest Destiny, or his decaying mafia petrostate, over the vigorous, hybrid and above all recognisably European society of stubbornn brilliant improvisers and tinkerers that Ukraine has turned out to be.
....It's as though the French crown were to look at the American Patriots after 1779 and say, you know what, you've done surprisingly well, annihilating Burgoyne's army and denying the redcoats the hinterlands and all that, huzzah for you. But you know those long campaigns in New Jersey and the Carolinas really didn't go as well as we all hoped, plus Rochambeau lost a lot of kit up in Providence.
So isn't it time you stopped wasting blood and treasure and sued for peace now? Hey, maybe King George will grant you 'those rights of Englishmen' that still looked good back in 1775.

Would you please stop being rational, it gets in the way of my blinders.

Gaia theory.

I just released CMAutoEditor 2.3.
https://github.com/DerButschi/CMAutoEditor/releases/tag/2.3
The main feature is a new profile, CMBS.
In addition there are a few QoL and performance updates.
Default foliage and ground settings: This was actually ninja-added earlier but I slightly improved the feature and added made it possible to switch them off. If you either add entries with tags ["default", "ground"] or ["default", "foliage"] and set their priority to -999, you can use these settings to replace the default tile mixture you get when starting a new map. I personally don't always like the patches of yellow grass and like to have a random tree in there every now and then. Every other item on that position will overwrite the default settings. Brush sizes: For things like ground tiles and some others (where appropriate), CMAutoEditor now uses larger brush sizes if possible. This greatly speeds up e.g. large areas of farmland. Minimum pause now selectable in GUI. This parameter is the minimal pause between two actions (e.g. clicks) in CMAutoEditor. If you encounter CMAutoEditor leaving out tiles that should be there (most likely visible when setting elevations on Steam), increase this parameter. Improved post-processing. The post-processing is the final step before writing results of osm2cm to file. If there is conflicting content for a tile, it takes care of properly sorting it out w.r.t. priority settings. It sometimes produced weird results and generally didn't communicate much. While working better now it may also be slower, so if you experience an excessive increase in processing time, let me know. Fixed a few bugs and missing features for selecting bounding boxes when running osm2cm. This significantly improves using osm2cm standalone, i.e. without loading a grid file from dgm2cm. Enjoy!

I am 73 by 2050 I won't be here any longer. Climate change is good business for these people. They don't fly economy for starters. Oh yes my electricity runs on solar and use the car twice a week. Not much the world can do about climate change even if it is caused by man. Lift the third world out of poverty and you may get the support of something like 6 Billion people. Yes that takes industry, our indigenous people lived in 50C during summer for the last 40000 years. Better get used to it. 

Just what they need Climate Change Zealots in the Ukraine.
 

Artillery may not be but Gunners are, so there's that to hold on to.

One can get, and I have used, shotshell ammo in many calibers.  The challenge is spin, as the rifled barrel results in as much as 300000RPM from a rifle (vs much less in handguns) which _very_ quickly scatters the shot.

And then there are the logistics issues and the "holy crap, I loaded shot to try and hit that guy 100m away" factor when someone grabs the wrong mag.

I think C-UAS is a platoon / squad level thing with anti-UAV UAVs and / or netting devices.

Wow one of the best clips of the war yet. That is crazy. 

Closer and closer to slaughterbots.

Those who enjoy war porn (i've had my fill) will be engaged by the bradley shooting up the town - but wait for the end where the drone flies into the shelter entrance and blows it up. So make that a small swarm with some autonomy, and fly instead through the shelter with communications relay drone remaining at each corner to allow the mini-swarm to act as a unit and send BDA back to headquarters.  Then the shelter isn't a shelter, it's a pre-dug graveyard.
This is right around the corner.  With the current rate of AI development and drone innovation (driven by the Russo-Ukraine war) I say eighteen months or so.

Can't tell you how glad I am to be living in a mostly-peaceful country with a friendly neighbour.