LongLeftFlank
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15
Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
So what they should do is stick all you guys on a Humint and PsyOps courses. Ok, so you attend 10 parties and hear the same BS line. How similar are those lines? Do they sound scripted? Are some genuine? Now what aren’t they saying? You are going to see a pecking order pretty quick so who is driving the party line? This gives you a baseline. Now as you attend more parties what is that baseline doing? Is is moving? Is it static? Who is talking to you? Who is talking to someone else and are they telling the same story? Now does the story change based on audience, teller? Once you really get good at it you will spot anomalies - no party line is going to be totally airtight (and if it is, then that is something). Human beings hemorrhage information, it is baked into the species. The trick is to see the patterns.
Then there are the blanks - why is no one talking about X? Wait a minutes - didn’t the last 5 guys say X and not Y. If your eyes are glazing over, you are doing it wrong. Common phrases, buzzwords. I once jacked up a ChatGPT return because of a buzz phrase catch. Gaps in stories that someone else might fill.
And then the wind shifts. You can get a sense of where the herd is going. What is spooking them. We collectively seek certainty like moths to flames. What is their certainty? What is their uncertainty? A good experienced listener can unpeel a social group in minutes. This is how Humint works - rumour, gossip, BS. I bet you can pick a MAGA guy out in seconds right now. Like that but broader.
Wow, the semiotics of HUMINT. Paging the ghost of Umberto Eco.
"A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn't know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars."
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Trying to get back on topic.
I didn't see this one posted before. Second video. Besides being quite gruesome, as noted (though not too close up, CM level 4), there are a lot of cuts so it's hard to follow the action. But there are some interesting tactical moments, if you have the stomach for the rest.
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2 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Really? From my experience, nobody is as full of **** as a room full of drunk Chinese businessmen...or really any room of businessmen.
Well brod, the Ignore key is over there.
Anyhoo, when last seen DC (or Ottawa, or ________) technocrats can do a pretty fine line (or several) in BS too. It's a renewable resource.
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27 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
You want more than wiki? Break out your cheque book, I have a decent hourly rate...and you get "friends and family" prices.
I can't speak to specific Chinese "educated cosmopolitan" mind-set (you got any good sources for this?), but hey Russia convinced itself to invade Ukraine on less than that. So, ok, as a political narrative/lever I can buy it.
As to their Near Abroad, totally accept the expansion of control but I suspect they are looking at outer buffer states to protect the back door from European/Western interference. No small problem with Islamic VEOs in that back yard too...welcome to being a great power...everyone blames you for everything.
I think China is gleefully happy to make Putin as weak as possible. Russia is sitting on a lot of energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves - more wiki for ya. Oh and look at Western Siberia: https://www.britannica.com/science/natural-gas/Location-of-major-gas-fields ) and China needs that on the cheap to have any chance to challenge the US. So a weak and fractured Russia to exploit that just makes good sense.
Where I draw question marks is on actual physical occupation/ownership. That is how we view the threats, through old geographic domain lenses. I am not sure China sees it that way as "more land = more problems" in a lot of ways. I do not for a second buy into the Hal Brand theories of Chinese Collapse = Chinese WW3 as if they are somehow a reincarnation of the Third Reich. In many (cynical) ways it is in the US best interest to sell China as an expansionist threat that we can all rally around. China is definitely a threat but we need to think pre-WW1, not WW2.
As to Huns. As far as I can tell, no one really knows what this bunch really looked like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns. Kinda a mixed bunch of Steppe tribes that seemed to invade and pillage whenever they got bored. They did invade China but it was in 127 BC (https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/military-defense/beat-huns.htm#:~:text=In 127 BC%2C the Huns,backup camp of the Huns.)
So what for Ukraine? Well first off China will likely keep Russia on life support because the last thing they want is re-normalization and oil and gas flowing West again. They also do not want Russia to fully collapse as that is really a problem for them too. They want Russia floating in the Jello-salad like a piece of rancid pineapple. Just smelly enough to spoil the fun, but not so toxic as to screw the whole party. So they will continue to pump support...to a point. And happily watch as Russia gets weaker and more dependent on them...on that we do agree.
Yup, I think we have closed the loop on that.
Let me PM you a brandy from the Luminous Globe in the Skeptics Lounge. I am partial to Duque d'Alba Oro.
...My sources are countless late nights BSing with Chinese business folks in tony bars in various glittering capitals (preferably on their dime). Money talks and bizdev drinks.
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6 hours ago, The_Capt said:
You should have went with the “drinking” off ramp... But simplifying the Indo-Pac down to land grabs with Disney sound bites is not the way to go.
Wow, you're on quite a tear there, O Smartest Guy on the Thread.
And nice wikipedia work, but you're the one skipping back and forth between centuries and dynasties at this point. So maybe we should take that pissing match over to a 'How Hot Is Xi'an Gonna Get' thread.
Let me restate the point that matters:
Many educated, cosmopolitan and not particularly anti-Western Chinese feel today, and have felt for quite some time, that unhappy convergences of history beginning around 1500, compounded by sheer European rapacity, placed a huge preponderance of the world's resources under Western (that's white people) hegemony by 1900. They aren't actually wrong about that.
So they are now working to shift hegemony in China's favour wherever they can. I probably would too, were I Chinese. But since I'm not Chinese, I don't see it as a good idea.
While China is buying up every mining, processing and transshipment facility it can, anywhere it can (in the absence of ability to 'send a gunboat' to enforce or void its contracts), the obvious places for them to focus lie in their own Asian backyards: Tibet-Xinjiang, Mongolia, the South China Sea basin, northern Myanmar, prospectively Afghanistan and any other 'Stans they can buy their way into.
...But well above and beyond all those is Siberia. They can buy whatever they like from there today of course by paying off the siloviki in Moscow, but that's no substitute for strengthening control over time, over generations.
And as Steve said, they are just thrilled to let Putin make those regions and their populations as weak and marginal as possible.
There's no Disney yellow hordes theory at work here (they were Huns btw, so actually 'white' for some defininition of 'white'). Nor is there some all-wise Confucian thousand-year-plan behind it. It's just garden variety reelpolitik. China is now the world's top manufacturer, and resources (and embargoes) matter more to them now than anyone.
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10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Hah! I knew this all sounded familiar! How you remembered sending me something in 2015 will forever astonish me
Obviously this topic was discussed after Russia moved into Ukraine the first time. Here is a new link as the one you sent me is dead:
Steve
This idea, that Russia ultimately *must* align with Europe/the Anglosphere, or else have its Asian provinces slip under Chinese control is several centuries older than 2015.
As I posted here a good while back, many patriotic Chinese -- including anticommunists -- feel very much cheated by white folks out of their 'rightful' share of the world's landmass and resources. Not just by the British opium traders and other colonialists, but by Russia.
Historical reality is far more complex of course. The Ming court became insular, paranoid and focused on its own internal power struggles*. They fell to the Qing (Manchus, basically a Turco-Mongol-Korean confederation, which is what the Khanates had all become by then). The Qing Sinicised rapidly ("nailed boots to silk slippers") but proved little better than the Ming at contesting lands and seas beyond their traditional frontiers.
* Plagues and, possibly, volcano/climate-induced famines also weakened the Empire.
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5 hours ago, danfrodo said:
deleted, the above is so awful just need to walk away
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10 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Ya not sure. LLF is in Manila so it is already late (early) there...I think he might be drinking. Not sure how Mongolia got wrapped up in all this. Gotta say though, Denis Villeneuve made really cool use out of them in Dune:
I'm in Europe right now, but nice try.
Steve had me correctly.
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1 hour ago, dan/california said:
And China is cheering their best buddy Vlad on. The Middle Kingdom is only too happy to repopulate all those hinterlands, which they would've done in the Ming dynasty had they known it contained useful stuff.
Russia has also done a good job of bleeding out the descendants of the Great Khans since about 1650, so they no longer become China's rulers at various intervals.
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2 hours ago, Carolus said:
Russia bleeds and only its more competent components manage to remain (whether political or military). They are learning - on a tactical level, or, when it comes to war economics and regime stability, on a strategic level.
Good post, thanks, but to continue the knife metaphor, this one is double-edged.
In all wars, as reflected in memoirs from Gilgamesh on, it's either the clueless newbs or the best, bravest and most highly skilled warriors who tend to perish in the largest numbers.
...Of course, provided they survive to learn, their replacements might prove as or even more effective, especially if they haven't had to unlearn outmoded or destructive prewar practices (e.g. medal parades
). But that's really more organisation-driven than individual. Good men lost are still good men lost.
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2 hours ago, Haiduk said:
Russia is blocking POW exchanges. Last one took place more than three months ago. Total during public exchanges (I think here weren't included unofficial exhanges with Wagners and on units level during first phase of war) were libereated 2420 of servicemen and 138 civilians
Recently Ukrainian authorities made a statments a whole colony for convicts in Vinnytsia oblast will be provided for Russian POWs, because their number already significantly exceeded capabilities of other places of their keeping
...or else spread copious unofficial rumours in the RU blogosphere to the effect that PWs are joining the volunteer legion. Sprinkle in a sinister British SAS angle; sucks 'em in every time.
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1 hour ago, Haiduk said:
Why our command just put troops in passive defense and just "extinguish fire" with small armored fireteams - with such tactic Russians anyway will trumpling step by step our defense.
Pending a slaughterbot tech solution, would one possible step be to saturate the threatened zones with FASCAM fields? Make them pay for every meter in even more zombie blood.
...Both sides left compliance with the antimine treaty a few dozen exits back; that's about the least of Ukraine's worries right now.
Also, shouldn't every hardened position in the coke plant by now have giant wire controlled demo charges buried beneath it? Ortona / Mosul rules.
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7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
The issue for Ukraine is the problems it might cause with allies who still buy from Russia.
Screw em.
Let them eat spot!
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/11/07/lng_venture_global_hurts_everyone_991040.html
Venture Global sells liquified natural gas to various folks in Europe. Unfortunately, they have yet to sell that gas at contracted prices, because they have yet to declare [their LNG export terminal in Louisiana] 'ready' for commercial operations.
Venture Global has found and is exploiting a hole in the regulatory scheme. That has allowed them to sell the natural gas into the more lucrative – as Europe scrambles to find natural gas to replace Russian gas – spot market for natural gas.
Over the last 18 months, the company has shipped out about 200 cargoes of liquified natural gas.
The idea that you can somehow deliver 200 cargoes and yet not be ready for commercial operation is ridiculous on its face. Things can go wrong. But they are not that complicated. Things rarely go wrong for 18 months without some sort of remedy.
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Second problem. Just read that Economist report on The Future of War and Ukrainian soldiers are whispering to avoid being picked up by acoustic sensors. So when they start blasting the sky with shotguns like a Taliban wedding they are going to get picked up pretty damn quick and killed by something else. This entire damned war is creating major dilemmas for troops on the ground. Half-assed can get one killed faster than "no-***" in some cases.
Right now dispersion, camouflage, digging deep, EM and acoustic discipline and moving seem to be the best ways to stay alive.
In business, we call this 'making perfect the enemy of good.' In your profession I believe the term is 'zero defect mentality'.
So fine, a proper army (UA) will need tactical training on not acting like drunken duck hunters (mobiks).
Still, in the last analysis, when a Mavic is hunting my specific arse, I'll take some kind of 40mm shotgun shell that *might* kill it now, and take my chances later with the theoretical artillery barrage that the ruckus *might* attract.
The counter(s) have got to be as cheap or cheaper than the threat, we all agreed on that. So surprise! it doesn't also walk the dog and slice bread.
I don't see what is so controversial about this.
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2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Clays don’t fly like this:
Sure, and I knew someone would jump on me, but if I'm that second guy facing death and dismemberment I'd much sooner have a single shotgun shot to try to save myself, or maybe at least detonate it further away, rather than trying to plink it with my AKS.
...Maybe give every grunt leaving his trench an underbarrel GL in which he locks and loads a special round that combines pellets with a little smoke, to give just enough concealment to flee?
I'm sure the Culin hedgerow device was half-assed too, but it was better than nothing.
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1 hour ago, Hapless said:
Just wait until these are automatic homing and deployable via artillery
The Ivans are already starting to use them as well. Countermeasures are imperative, however imperfect.
A shotgun could have taken down that second one. Squaddies need to start shooting clays for practice.
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6 hours ago, danfrodo said:
Well here again, the conventional thinking is that a 'bridgehead' must ultimately need to build (and defend) a bridge, in order to pour mech columns across it for the Big Push and the Breakout.
Nope, take a leaf from the 1942 Imperial Japanese Army or the PAVN. This is bayou warfare, low density infiltration, with access to heavy fire support strongly favouring the Ukes.
Russia should be facing at least as much difficulty resupplying its forces at this far end of the line as Ukraine does slipping boatloads of supplies across by night.
Difficult conditions for both sides, to say the least? Hell, yes. But we know 100% who is the tougher side.
And if this does ultimately wind down to a cease fire in place, Ukraine definitely wants to hold these wetlands, for numerous reasons.
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Lovely* mapwork here.
https://nitter.net/Pouletvolant3/status/1722548700281528536#m
* My brother once told my nephew: "Son, the only time a man should ever need to use 'lovely' or 'fabulous' in a sentence is in describing the legendary city of El Dorado."
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Whose shattered tree hellscape mod are you using?
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2 hours ago, Kinophile said:
[Caveats galore] These were classic Soviet tactics in WW2, I believe? In the later, Bagration stage I mean. Drove the Germans bananas because they had to squash even tiny bridgeheads immediately before they rapidly grew. The Soviets, I believe, then poured men into whichever bridgeheads had not been squashed, presenting the impossible task of a multitude of danger points to the overstretched defenders.
Allied approach was a lot more deliberate, focussed and aimed to overwhelm locally with a massive force, while Soviets aimed to overwhelm operationally (sorta) with smaller forces, expanding whichever one proved successful. Former was less loss-prone, the latter was costly but almost guaranteed success, eventually.
There other points along the Dnipr where the ZSU has bridgeheads. Perhaps we'll see them expanding soon.
Forcing Ivan to shove VDV regiments (or whatever their actual field strength may be) and artillery to the (very squishy) utmost end of their line is just awesome.
Especially if UA can effectively sever the Perekop isthmus, forcing LOCs to take the long way from Donetsk.
Taking back the Dnpro delta seems like a pretty major strategic winback for Ukraine, even if the Russians manage to wall it off with a bazillion mines again somewhere around their (defunct) aqueduct.
But, it's gonna be basically jungle warfare there. Forget the heavies.
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9 hours ago, Zeleban said:
“First, 2-3 sabotage groups are found there, then they form a platoon, and after a couple of days... the Ukrainian command had found an opportunity, in some still unknown way, to ensure the replenishment..."
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10 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Long Left Flank (damn him, had to say it)
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28 minutes ago, Ales Dvorak said:
(This is after all Page 3003)
...I think this video has been around before. I have no idea where it came from, or whether it's real or faked (trying to order around terrified guys whose language you don't speak is probably chancy in any army) but the entire idea of foreign barrier detachments keeping Ukrainian mobiks in line is utter tosh.
Typical Russian second grade schoolyard propaganda: Well, YOU'RE blocking detachments times TWO!
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by LongLeftFlank
Well over 2000 pages ago, around the time of the battles for Sieverdonetsk/ Lysichansk, somebody (Steve @Battlefront.com ?) observed that the Ukrainian command is quite adept at setting up the Russians to make costly mistakes and then forcing them to make them, even when their own commanders know full well what the trap is. Pure Sun Tzu.
This latest reversion to VDV kampfgruppen attacks (BTGs, but lower tech and more infantry) seems to call for UA to revert to the Jaeger tactics that worked well for them during the 'war of movement' in the north in 2022. Infiltrate and envelop the roadbound elements using small killer teams, not allowing them to form up for any coherent attack so they go off piecemeal, flail and fizzle. I doubt Russian drone warfare is yet at a state where it can find and destroy these teams, and 2023 mobiks still seem to be pants and flank security and active patrolling, even if they wear VDV sailor shirts.
A mistake IMHO would be a 'NATO solution', i.e. trying to bomb these forces to smithereens using UA's very finite stocks of ranged PGMs as ersatz airpower. Depleting these stocks may be part of Teplinski's own plan, given that these actions seem to fall near the limit of UA conventional artillery sited on the north bank of the river.