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The_Capt

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The_Capt last won the day on March 16

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  1. We actually have no idea what Putin’s real base of genuine support is or is not. First off he controls any and all “polls” either directly or indirectly so trying to gauge who really supports him, who is pretending simply to avoid trouble and who opposes but is afraid to say anything, in real terms is basically impossible to do inside Russia, let alone outside looking in. “Look a bunch of people lined up to support him” is not a viable basis for deductions. Second problem is that support, in a functioning democracy, is founded on a basis of “informed decision”. This means that all sides can spin, argue and slant but in the end the news media and objective journalism is supposed to provide a voter with a range of diverging viewpoints and facts. Voters can then decide who to support, or not support based on their own personal perception and understanding. This is damned hard to do in a functioning liberal democracy; however, in Russia it is likely impossible. Putin controls the mainstream media - we have heard endless stories of dissenters being arrested or charged, hell he passed laws making criticism of this war illegal. He also has a lot of control within social media, suppressing sites and flooding the RUSNet with stooges. We have seen enough outright lies and insane claims out of Russian media in the last two years to know that the average Russian simply is not able to access much beyond what Putin wants them to see and hear. Under these conditions “real support” is nearly impossible because no alternative facts, ideas or even options are ever presented. Finally, as our Ukrainian friends like to point out continually, the average Russian is poorly educated, poor wealth and largely ignorant…this is why they keep signing up for this war. To now accuse these people of “knowingly supporting Putin” as if they have access to alternatives is short-sighted at best. Further, Kraze’s continued insistence to call every living Russian on the planet as vicious war loving murders is not only disingenuous, it treads dangerously close to genocidal narratives that have no place on what is supposed to be a rational objective forum. We know Russians opposed this war, a few hundred thousand ran away. Others are resisting passively. We also know that many really do not even understand what this war is or is not because Putin is preventing them from seeing any truth but his own. We also know some Russians also buy into this war and Putin fully even knowing the reality. In the end we are going to have to deal with all of them in some form or another because as much as some people are acting out emotionally here, we are not going to wipe Russia off the face of the earth and salt the ground on their mass graves. So be pissed off, but do not come here and promote outright disinformation in some sort of weird attempt to get us to all buy into some “every Russian is evil and must die” nonsense. There are all sorts of sites on the internet where people on both sides can engage in that emotional orgy, but it should not be here. The second this forum becomes one of those places, I for one, am out.
  2. I can fully understand and sympathize with their positions and sentiments. But lies are lies, no matter who is pushing them. We either try and hold onto objective truth or we can just become another echo chamber showing one sided war porn and offering weak analysis. We are challenged enough to avoid our own biases without completely abandoning what this entire thread was supposed to do in the first place. I oppose disinformation no matter the source.
  3. Considering that he basically: controls the media, makes real opposition disappear (or kills them outright), has central control of internal security who are arresting anyone who even has a whiff of real dissent, and anyone running against him is basically approved by him - Russia isn't even close to a functioning democracy at this point anymore than North Korea is. To come here claiming otherwise is disinformation of the worst sort.
  4. BS of the highest order. You have zero proof of this and just about no one who knows anything about election processes outside of Russia agrees with you.
  5. I thought RA FPV usage and effectiveness was on the rise. To the point there was fear of UAS parity. These charts would suggest otherwise.
  6. Depends on context of the kinetic environment (there are many variations of that environment). If we are talking disciplined well coordinated response any of those three would be great. If you need “zero to f#cking 60 at the bat of an errant eyelash” go with the less traditional partners like Jamaicans or Afghans.
  7. Very good point. I have said before and will re-state here and now, a free fall Russian collapse will make the current war a fond memory compared to what would likely happen next. Our best case scenario is a slow and steady decline of an isolated Russia until they are pretty much a client state of China, who will of course recognize “being shackled to a corpse” and all that entails. I think a full Russian failure is in the cards without a major regime change in a direction that simply remains extremely remote - I.e. full Russian pivot back towards democracy and a European facing political ruling class. The question is really “how fast?”
  8. There you go. You finally landed on it. So this is pretty much what they tried to do. In fact they started to tie the hands of the Red Team to stop them from winning.
  9. If those USVs bring UAS with them those nets will have to cover the entire ship. I am interested in a few ideas beat nets. First are very small unmanned bots who swim in and manually cut the nets up. Second is tandem attacks. Third are standoff EFP which will simply blow through the nets.
  10. I remember hearing about that ex, caused quite a stir. They ended up re-setting and re-floating the fleet. I think we are going to see hybrid surface/sub-surface systems. Sub-surface for long range positioning and then pop them up and go fast for close in kill. Very small USV/UUVs are hard to pick up on sonar and impossible on radar. Once they get close enough surface and go hydrofoil or somesuch and swarm. Not a bad idea to launch a bunch of air systems at the same time. Like UAS only way to really counter this will be a screen of ones own USVs. This approach basically takes the strength of sea mines but makes em a lot more mobile and flexible. Further it allows for offensive employment. Like heavy in land warfare, large expensive platforms are at risk of becoming liabilities as opposed to assets in this sort of environment.
  11. I think you have just articulated why Russia cannot simply sit back on defence. Add to this political considerations etc. A defensive war against an opponent that can hammer really expensive stuff, like infrastructure - while the same opponents warfighting infrastructure is effectively inside NATO nations is a sure fire way to losing in the long run. Putin needs to keep the pressure up until something gives because he really has no real other viable options. If he can get the west to falter and start talking ceasefires, he can then reframe this fiasco as the greatest Russian victory since Bagration.
  12. I have a serious problem with this narrative that somehow Russia “did Adiivka” and has now fully recovered. This entire position is based on some pretty sketchy vehicle production stats, most of the info coming out of Russia itself. As far as we can tell the RA wrecked an entire MRD at Adiivka. This is on top of loses elsewhere. The idea that Russia simply stamped out an entire shiny new MRD to replace it is disinformation as far as I am concerned. Russian force quality has been on a one way trajectory from the start of this war, except for a few notable areas: UAS and ISR - and we still are not sure if these are anomalies or trends. In other capability areas it is exactly as you describe, more older equipment. (equipment less suitable for this environment) This is due to RA losses exceeding Russian industrial capacity to generate modern equipment. It has been noted by more than one expert that Russia is draining its Soviet legacy force pool of equipment and ammunition. So the idea that Russia is simply shrugging off all these losses - losses that Ukraine is barely able to sustain, while quaking under the giant footsteps of an unstoppable Russia, all the while the weak and puny west sits back and watches…well this borders on propaganda not worthy of this forum. These sorts of gross oversimplifications without any real evidence, or skewing evidence need to stop as they play directly in Russian information operations. I suspect the Ukrainian posters who have pitched these angles are a combination of war weary and/or are thinking that by continuing to promote a desperate Ukrainian situation that we will somehow become politically motivated. However, they are missing the very real risk that some who read this forum may take this entire narrative as a sign that Ukraine is a lost cause, and we are all out of patience with lost causes. By continually shouting “Ukraine is dooooomed” they might just convince enough people that they are right. The answer won’t be to “double down and support Ukraine” it may wind up being “cut out losses and move on”. That is what makes this angle such a powerful pro-Russian tool. Russia must make this war appear “too hard, too complicated” because we in The West hate those situations. Any and all skewed or heavily biased assessments like these simply play into Russian hands.
  13. Not really but maybe half way there….? My point was that a societies military is a lot more than a lone political ideological data point. If we somehow built a perfect Afghan military that aligned with their society and culture the outcome would have likely been the same. This is because the issues with Afghanistan were deeper than defence and security. The ANA was very often a domestic army of strangers because the locals were voting with IEDs. No equipment or training was going to solve that. Maybe a couple hundred years of social evolution but it really wouldn’t matter how we built a central military in that nation because it did not want to be the nation we wanted it to be. Hell the Taliban do not have full internal security control and they are far better aligned to Afghan reality. The failure to “graft” an Afghan security force was a symptom of a larger disease, not the disease in itself. My larger point is that there is a link between a society and its military (obviously) but we should avoid oversimplifying that relationship or ignore a lot of other factors as we apply a nice neat template to the war in Ukraine. When one is doing Military Assistance, you definitely have to take into account “how they fight” but one cannot bet on that single pony and expect success. “How they live”, “Where they live”, “How they pay for it”, “Who they fight and fight for” and “Why they fight” are much larger than whatever political ideology is in play. In reality this entire discussion is not about building militaries around the world, it is about intervention as a broader strategy. Based on the last 30 years it has been the major strategy of the Western world, we are doing a version of it in Ukraine right now. However, our successes in employing this strategy are spotty at best, with many high profile failures. How much longer we are going to keep trying it? Well that is a very good question.
  14. I guess the primary evidence is not in losses or numbers, it is in the fact that the RA have not been able to translate tactical advances into an operational breakout/breakthrough. If the UA were totally overmatched the RA would be advancing tens of kms, if not hundreds. Does anyone think that Russia can do this right now but is holding back due to restraint? What is clear is that the UA is still able to deny air, land and sea spaces even with the ammunition disparities. Now as to how long either side can sustain this, or if Ukraine is somehow losing more than the RA - well we do not know, none of us. The UA has been holding actual casualty numbers very close to their chest. So far the Ukrainian president has said openly that the UA has lost about 31k KIA and one can extrapolate about x3-5 wounded. Is that enough to buckle UA force generation? Again, unknown. All we do know is that neither side appears close to operational collapse, and the UA is holding the line and costing the RA heavily. We do not know what the breaking points of either military are or are not. Any other “bright and shiny” or “doom and gloom” assessments are pretty much being pulled out of @sses by this point.
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