Splinty
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Posts posted by Splinty
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On 9/10/2023 at 8:28 AM, S-Tank said:
Bump
Where can I get these excellent Soviet vehicle mods. Love the numbers!
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9 hours ago, danfrodo said:
I wasn't saying we should never go to mars. I am saying we shouldn't be 'colonizing' it anytime soon or even sending humans. we need better technology before we do that. And it would cost an insane amount of money to send even a research team there & back. At a time when we use drones to do lots of dangerous dirty work why would be send humans to mars for research right now? I am all for sending 'drones' until we get better propulsion & survival tech. Mars is a radiation soaked hell hole w low gravity and very little air, why would we 'colonize' that in near term? It's a death sentence and would cost a trillion dollars. And why would we try to send people to mars on 7-9 month trip, each way, when we don't even have a base on the moon, 2-3 days away. (note, I do think we should put a station on moon and use that to learn).
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2 minutes ago, dan/california said:
One thing I would throw into the the discussion of "soldier" vs "warrior" is that a lot of it simply the evolution of a marketing strategy by organizations that have to recruit volunteers. As a related example look at the evolution of U.S. Army head gear over the last ~fifty years. The whole Green Beret hype train has slowly crept though entire army as various colored berets have become standard parts of various branches uniforms. This is even as the the same army has spent a very large amount of money on effective and expensive helmets to actually fight in.
The Marines got their brand marketing strategy right over a hundred years ago. It still works, and if it isn't broken...
An unpleasant parallel is that Wagner has to recruit volunteers, too. It is just that their recruiting pitch and contract is more like the one Hernando Cortez had with his conquistadores than anything recognizably modern.
The only units that currently wear berets are the same ones that had them all along. Special Forces, Rangers, and Airborne. Shinseki's failed experiment with Black berets for all troops is done.
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19 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
Colonizing Mars isn't insane. The insane part is that he thinks it can be done in a decade or two (he has absolutely no sense for what sort of timescales these things take place on). But, as an Isaac Arthur fan, I do think we'll colonize every planet, moon, asteroid, comet, and grain of dust in this (and every other) solar system eventually (assuming we don't blow ourselves up first, but feeling optimistic).
I totally agree. If we keep to this planet only we will die off.
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24 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:
I always look forward to reading a post by The_Capt. If you ever decided to write a book I would buy it in an instant. In regards to the whole "warrior" discussion, despite nearly a decade of service on active duty in the US Army I was never comfortable calling myself a warrior. I was an intel nerd and despite my knowing full well that my job was to facilitate the death of other people and that tactical SIGINT is quite dangerous to me warriors were the maneuver guys going around kicking in doors and shooting people in the face or blowing stuff up with tanks. I think this stems from my formative experience as a soldier in basic training. I went through POG basic at Fort Jackson, SC with a company full of intel, logistics, and maintenance trainees. My three platoon drill sergeants were all infantry NCOs with combat tours in Iraq or Afghanistan and they derisively referred to us as "warrior" throughout my three months in basic. That stuck with me and anytime someone since then has called me "warrior" I've kind of snickered in my head. Perhaps that would be different if I had ever seen combat but the closest I got to any real danger was two tours holding the line in South Korea.
As a former infantryman, Military Policeman, Signal Soldier, and Air Defender in the US Army, I always preferred Soldier. Warrior, and Warfighter never sat well with me.
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All I can say is that in over 20 years being a member of this forum, I've never hit the Ignore button. Until today.
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12 minutes ago, Holien said:
Or some background threshold in which Russia was told if you do X we will do Y has been breached.
Could be plenty of reasons for the release that doesn't fit your statement...
I personally think it's mostly a combination of diplomatic and bureaucratic inertia. Never underestimate the delaying power of "getting all the Is dotted and all the Ts crossed".
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Let's not forget the stories of how Russian soldiers coming home from Ukraine are treated. From what I've read it's worse than how US vets were treated during the Viet Nam era. On the other hand US vets returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan were judging from my own experience, were treated very well, regardless of people's opinions on the wars themselves.
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57 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:
I went through Army basic in 2010 and didn't do any bayonet training. We were a bunch of POGs though so I have no idea if the combat arms guys still get bayonet training.
I was in the Infantry. I just assumed that everybody still got bayonet training. So much for assumptions, lol.
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48 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
Trenches have been used in every single war (that I can think of) since WW1, and many, many wars prior to WW1.
Edit: And bayonets were still considered an important weapon at least as late as WW2, and were still retained in many armies until very recently (still a potential backup weapon, and some armies still maintain that bayonet training is a useful way of instilling aggressiveness).
It's not so hard to see why bayonets were retained as late as WW2. Imagine you have assaulted an enemy trench or are storming a house and you find yourself in close contact with an enemy soldier. You have a bolt-action rifle, and have missed your first shot. Is it faster and less risky to work the bolt to chamber a fresh round or to thrust your rifle forward to stab the enemy with your bayonet? Stabbing is probably faster and safer in this situation.
It's harder to imagine why bayonets were retained for so long after WW2. If you are in the same situation, but you have a semi-automatic or assault rifle, then the faster and safer option is probably to just squeeze the trigger again. So you would think that semi-automatic rifles would have been the final nail in the coffin for bayonets. But, as has been pointed out, bayonets don't run out of ammo.
The US Army and Marines still do bayonet training in basic and boot camp. But as was mentioned previously it's more about aggression and motivation than actually training to use them in combat. In any case a big knife always comes in handy.
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They couldn't get Prig to stand near a window. So they put him on a plane.
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22 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:
Either that or he’s a Ukrainian sympathizer. Probably figured that since the column had been creamed, it was “worth a shot” (see what I did there) to get rid of someone.
Or the Lieutenant was in the tank he shot at. Nothing like a good fragging.
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6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
This one goes out to Splinty... Bradleys on the advance:
Looks to be good spacing and communications between the Brad commanders appears to be excellent. The two at the start go back and forth as if they are controlled by a Human Player in CMBS
This is really good to see because I've noticed a lot of clumsy coordination, if even that, between vehicles. Going fast according to plan works out OK, but if anything off plan happens things often appear to get messy fast. This seems to me an example of training and combat experience paying off.
Splinty, what is your take on it?
Steve
Looks pretty good. A US unit would move out and space themselves the same way. Does anyone know if Ukrainian Units with NATO gear are organized in platoons of 3 vehicles (Soviet style) or 4 (NATO standard))?
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19 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:
Wouldn't a couple of ZSU-23's, even shooting at just the sound, massacre those guys? Imagine what a single Shilka could do! Only with total air-superiority such a thing would be feasible, i think, but if you had that, the whole drone-attack probably wouldn't be neccesary.
Absolutely. Spot on.
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2 hours ago, kimbosbread said:
I don’t think it’s that bad for two reasons:
- These things are fast, like 60+mph fast. Hitting a low, fast moving target even with an automatic weapon is nontrivial.
- This system “ideally” would come with SEI (ie suppress the infrantry) which in my mind is a swarm of drones that would attack any infantry or fortified positions at the same time. No reason a drone swarm is just HE and Thermobaric- could also just be smoke.
- You aren’t just carrying infantry, but the semi-autonomous second-gen UGVs we’ve discussed before, ie a AGM or a NLAW quad pack mounted on an ATV or a brace of stretchers.
The weakness of this system is less exposure, and that is requires lots of coordination in an EW environment. Paradrops in war zones seems to degenerate into messes anyway, so if you can offload coordination and navigation to the machines, and the suppression strategy, it might not be so bad.
One doesn't have to really aim to hit a group of relatively low flying and slow moving targets. All that is needed to degrade these types of attacks is to use lots of automatic fire in the general area of a group of these things. They would have to be pretty big to carry a fully loaded infantryman and his weapons systems. Yes, paratroop drops are extremely messy, but even airborne troopers weren't flying horizontally. And let's not forget the mass casualty events EVERY single airborne assault was. Even the successful ones like Normandy. Or to go from another direction, the helicopter borne air assaults of the Vietnam war.
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1 hour ago, danfrodo said:
I'd say not fanciful at all. and great for resupply. very very very interesting. Would be great for raids over the Dnieper. Probably a lot less dangerous than rubber boats.
This retired infantryman says, not only no, but HELL no. Why? You ask. Darn near every soldier on the ground has an automatic weapon. If a group of those "grunt copters" flies over or attempts to land near an enemy position, they will be massacred before they hit the ground.
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1 hour ago, buena said:
All the power to you for doing what you thought was right but it doesn't change the fact that some people profited from it very handsomely
Name me a war where that doesn't happen. A large number of super rich families got their money from World War 2.
Sorry Steve. I won't derail the thread again
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I didn't fight for the abstract concept of nationhood. But I DID choose to join the military (US Army) as a career. Because I love my friends and family, and being a soldier was my best way to serve THEM. When it actually came to war, I fought for the folks on my left and right. Nationhood sounds good as a thing to fight for, but there are very few people who actually do that.
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48 minutes ago, buena said:
Easy if you are property developer with the right contacts and lobby power in Washington
I didn't do 2 tours in Iraq to make somebody rich. I went to fight terrorists. You will find the vast majority of my felllow military members went for the same reason.
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15 minutes ago, chris talpas said:
Does mobilization buy Putin time however?
Can he be trying to run out the clock hoping for Trump being the disruptor and pressuring Republicans to drop support for Ukraine? -
11 minutes ago, chris talpas said:
Does mobilization buy Putin time however?
Can he be trying to run out the clock hoping for Trump being the disruptor and pressuring Republicans to drop support for Ukraine?Keep in mind the US elections are over a year away,and any policies that would harm Ukraine would take another 3 months or so to have any serious effects on their conduct of the war. Having said that I believe Trump getting back in office is a dangerous thing, but Ukraine still has a decent amount of time before any significant change in US policy can do damage.
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53 minutes ago, Butschi said:
But that is the point, the war has to actually have ended for that to happen, right? Sure there will always be people/companies/organizations willing to invest money but a true large scale rebuilding will only happen once a stable peace is established not just some frozen conflict.
Maybe in Eastern Ukraine, but don't forget that the western part of the country has sustained a lot of damage as well. A frozen conflict (which I don't think will happen) won't have much effect on rebuilding the west of the country. In any case, even if we end up in a Korea type situation. Ukraine will become like South Korea,with a thriving Western style economy.
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3 minutes ago, Butschi said:
True but that wasn't my point. Sorry that I didn't manage to really convey that. Ukraine will remain an independent state and of course that is a victory in itself.
Now, that may be a difference in philosophy, I know people over in the US value freedom probably above everything else which is, I think, a bit more nuanced in (western) Europe.
An independent Ukraine can still be (in a sense) isolated, i.e. outside of any alliances for security, both militarily and economically, and in a ruined state.
And whether you call that victory or defeat, it would still be bad for Ukraine and possibly good for the Putin regime.
Whatever happens, Ukraine will not be a ruined state. There are hundreds of Western contractors waiting for this war to end so they can help rebuild the country.
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51 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:
Western armour fetish is melting before our eyes. Not only another Leopard A6 was eliminated, but apparently Russians captured CV90 in so-so state:
https://twitter.com/wolski_jaros/status/1685546616319586305
(no idea why Twitter does not show thumbnails here)
Now compare crew losses from Soviet/Russian armor to NATO/Western armor.
This is really good to see because I've noticed a lot of clumsy coordination, if even that, between vehicles. Going fast according to plan works out OK, but if anything off plan happens things often appear to get messy fast. This seems to me an example of training and combat experience paying off.
Israel War Thread
in General Discussion Forum
Posted · Edited by Splinty
Bad grammar
Hamas, Hezbollah, and indirectly Iran will never allow that to happen. There are FAR too many fanatics in all those groups leadership, and their ranks to ever let any good solution happen. Until Hamas and Hezbollah are weakened to almost complete ineffectiveness and Iran contained, Gaza will be mired in poverty and terrorism.