LongLeftFlank
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15
Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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15 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
Get your own cheap Shaheds and start targeting fixed infra in Russian territory. See how they like freezing in the dark in Kursk.
Prophecy!!!!!
Thread:
https://nitter.net/PStyle0ne1/status/1728646861114712287#m
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2 hours ago, sross112 said:
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.
Matt Stoller is a bit of a one-note trumpet on monopolies and merger mania (though it's a very real problem), but interesting points here.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition
Wall Street and private equity firms prioritize cash out first, and that means a once functioning and nimble industrial base now produces more grift than anything else.... today government cash goes increasingly to stock buybacks rather than actual armaments.
The government can’t actually solicit bids from multiple players for most major weapons systems, because there’s just one or two possible bidders. So that means there’s little incentive for firms to expand output, even if there’s more spending. Why not just raise price?
the DOD is almost totally blind to the corporate owners of contractors and subcontractors, which might be one reason that, say, Chinese alloys are being discovered in sensitive weapons systems like the state of the art F-35.
Good NPR piece from early 2023, recounting the history of how America got here; it all seemed to make sense at the time.
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1. Unconfirmed, but
2. Also unconfirmed, but i think the Wise Men here called it right: it isn't just airborne drones that are going to reinvent tactical warfare.
Additional discussion, videos and links here. More than a little on the rah rah side regarding the tech, but we will see soon whether this is vapourtech or making an impact.
3. War profiteering?
4. Short tactical vignette: brew-up and bail-out
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24 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
All they were shot down, so their routes could see only radar operators %) Likely they had to hit power objects primarily. At least fragments of one cut off aerial power lines near power substation in the central part. In Kyiv oblast one enterprise dacility was slightly damaged by fragments.
There is an opinion in this time Russians can launch missiles and Shakheds in khaotic manner, causing hits in residential areas and victims to force Ukrianians to push on authorities to negotiate with Russia to stop war on any terms
Get your own cheap Shaheds and start targeting fixed infra in Russian territory. See how they like freezing in the dark in Kursk.
47 minutes ago, Haiduk said:Well.... Again and again I recall words of Lenin "We will hang capitalism on the rope, which it will sell itself to us"
Unfortunately, our capitalists also appear to have sold off the rope making machines.
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Tooze on the war economies. For interest, although I think he's lowballing the burden on Russia.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-250-the-precarious-stabilization
Even as it ramps up its war effort, Russia is devoting just over 6 percent of GDP to military spending. This is a serious effort, but far from overwhelming. Even under more serious sanctions in 2023 the Russian economy will have no difficulty paying for the imports it needs and no shortage of suppliers.
[But] the fact that Kyiv is not rocked by surging inflation or a collapsing currency, reflects a remarkable achievement in stabilizing Ukraine’s macroeconomy.... GDP has stabilized at 30 percent below its prewar level.
'secondary income' = foreign financing
Refugees
P.S. If you want an actual 'neo-nazi' take on the war, check out the post comments, which I will *not* link here (and you shouldn't either).
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16 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
What I was thinking about earlier was the likely next wave of micro-antipersonnel weapons -- part mine, part drone, part robot dog, part sentry gun, part Furby, part whatever -- that make those meat assaults dead letters before they even finish climbing out of their holes.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/marines-test-fire-robot-dog-armed-with-rocket-launcher
Note this video doesn't actually show the 'goat' walking around with, aiming or firing a LAWS strapped to it.
Note! the underlying quadrupedal robot is a Chinese-made Unitree Go1, which is readily available for purchase online, including through Amazon. Unitree's website offers the baseline Go1 Air for $2,700 and the Go1 Pro, which it says has more capable sensors that it uses for general movement and object recognition, for $3,500.
So here yet again, we see that while the West can innovate, it's the Chinese who scale.
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
The lesson is to never be nice to Long Lefty…it makes him uncomfortable and he lashes out.
(I do like how Armageddon begins with a sub off Tanzania nuking Borneo)
Red team anecdata
"Consolidated companies".
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7 hours ago, danfrodo said:
I said in the post I DON'T advocate suppressing what liars want to lie about. 'Right thinker'? I am nice to you and then you have to call me that? Jeebus, LLF. There is an often something called an evidence based reality, which is different than legislating falsehoods & prejudices.
The prior discussion was about censorship of unpleasant or triggering or wev views in the West, which some folks here seemed to think was a good idea so long as it aligned with their own views.
...But if i misrepresented your own views on the subject, I apologise.
Anyhoo, back to the war.
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23 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
anti-vax 'communication'. You mean baseless lies and misinformation?
It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So. (misattributed to Twain)
And no, this isn't advocating antivaxx.
...But the moment you or any other right thinker gets put in charge of defining The Truth and suppressing Falsehood, it's only a matter of time before you start legislating your own prejudices and falsehoods from the bench as well. Nobody is wise enough to know the boundary.
That's why we Westerners try to leave as much as possible up to individual conscience and choice, in spite of the many inefficiencies and risks that inhere in that.
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23 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
Why not? As recently as the Covid pandemic anti-vax communication was suppressed in a million of formal and less formal ways. The West is no virgin which would be suddenly debauched by this.
BTW from today's perspective there is no doubt that McCarthy was mostly right.
Quod custodiet ipsos custodes?
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31 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
By the way, how do you feel about the ban in a number of European countries on the broadcasting of the Russa Today TV channel?
I don't know the first thing about any of that, so I'm just going to do my LLF thing and good naturedly meme you.
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41 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
To begin with, I recommend solving the problem of information security in Western countries. Many of you still refuse to understand that Russia has long been waging a war against your countries - an information war. To wage this war, missile attacks, thousands of tanks, hundreds of aircraft are not needed. Recent events show that Putin is very aware of the weaknesses of the West and knows how to exploit them. Otherwise, the NATO bloc will simply rot from the inside.
Sorry, 'solving the problem of information security' as in imposing censorship?
The Committee for Public Safety? The House Un-American Activities Committee?
Look, Russia does what it can, no doubt (and mainly without effect), but the troubles of the West are overwhelmingly of our own making, and not within Putin's or Xi's control.
P.S. And not to drag this thread back into the pointless swamp of politics, but IMHO, the A Number One on the list of 'troubles of the West overwhelmingly of our own making' is that it is only China that is able to do sh*t like this today:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/23/solar-module-prices-may-reach-0-10-w-by-end-2024/
Last project I contracted out, it was USD 26 cents, and that was record beating low! And that after huge plant fires and a polysilicon shortage. Say what you like about China guys, and I've been a China cynic for years. But that is pure Godzilla-sized scale economy in action.... Arsenal of Democracy level mojo, without the Democracy part.
Now just take out solar modules and put in 'cheap FPV drones'. Then see if you don't feel an uncomfortable feeling in your guts.
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6 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
But it turns out one doesn't need to be very combat effective to hold a hole when there's nowhere to else to go.
But in this grim new 1917 paradigm of static warfare, isn't that mobik simply a 'useless eater' until he becomes a drone target, once the Ukrainians stop trying to take his hole?
...what I was thinking about earlier was the likely next wave of micro-antipersonnel weapons -- part mine, part drone, part robot dog, part sentry gun, part Furby, part whatever -- that make those meat assaults dead letters before they even finish climbing out of their holes.
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5 minutes ago, Butschi said:
On the other hand you might ask the question if someone should be obliged to serve - i.e. die for - his country and probably on a strip of land that means nothing to him just because fate willed it that he was born a) on the wrong side of the border and b) with a Y chromosome.
Well sure, so long as there are prosperous nations willing to take in Ukrainian exiles as metics, then a lot of them will make that choice. I suppose that's part of what Putin is counting on, although I have no idea who is going to settle the empty lands: Chechens maybe?
If not, they need to fight and bleed for their homeland, or else accept that they and their compatriots will once more become thralls of the Muscovites.
BTW, Western nations looking for a source of blonde white immigrants (as an alternative to, umm, immigrants who don't look like that) is a standard tankie meme, a cynical variant on 'fighting to the last Ukrainian'.
There is some precedent though. The French did quite well out of the revolutions of the mid-19th century, bringing in waves of Austro-Hungarian and Italian revolutionaries who rapidly Gallicised. The anticommunist Polish exiles of WW2 rapidly became British, etc.
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43 minutes ago, acrashb said:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/10/29/trenches-and-tech-on-ukraines-southern-front
Major says he has lost 15% of his colleagues over the last few months.
Ukraine is also hampered by the fact that its drones are still largely assembled and paid for by volunteers.
the Russians have imposed a 10km no-tank zone behind the front
[Russian] jamming boxes create high-energy fields around an object so that signals around it stop working. Attacking such equipment, without video feedback, is a difficult if not impossible task. Ukrainian units by and large don’t yet have the same technology.
Those in [UA] units [in Zaporizhe] such as his own have more chance of dying than surviving. “Seventy-thirty. Some don’t even see their first battle.”
Very important article, do not miss it.
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On 11/21/2023 at 11:23 PM, LongLeftFlank said:
I am not going to overreact to our good friend @Zeleban's anecdata at the moment, although I do sympathise with the pressure he and the Ukrainian nation is under while we sit in peace and comfort. Perhaps other Ukrainian threaders might chime in here?
That said, there are disturbing signs that the war is likely to become much more deadly for Ukrainian infantry in the field this winter, absent effective counters to the growing Russian drone threat. For example....
And please, can we take a pass on the kneejerk 'surebutthemobikshaveitfarworse' whataboutism. Until enough mobiks actually quit or mutiny over the 'far worse', it's cold comfort to the Ukrainian guys.
....Anyhow, it seems impossible that the Ukrainian nation can keep letting its already weary volunteer force continue doing the bleeding while able-bodied young men go about their peacetime business, or live as refugees abroad.
If that is indeed what is happening, which I'm not totally sure of tbh.
(more anecdata though: I recently I had a Linkedin friend trying to find a 30 year old Ukrainian engineer a job in Canada and I was tempted to ask why he wasn't at home serving his country?)
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7 hours ago, Kinophile said:
If we built this large wooden badger....
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=48441
'General Maus' is quite an old problem, alongside 'General Mud' and 'General Winter.'
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10 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:
Anyway, I think the North American conservative movement needs more guys like Mitt Romney and Steven Harper as far as their understanding of the threat that Putin presents. As far as Russia goes, I think both of those guys would feel right at home on this forum.
Well of course, conservative capitalists like their plumbers and other 'buttcrack' service providers and offshore labour to be hard working, goal-oriented, cheerful, not-too-expensive and if possible, white.
Them O'rentals got too dam' uppity....
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3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
I am a Canadian-centrist, which in the rest of the world (except Scandinavia) appears to be slightly left of Marx.
Dependensia by any other name would smell as sweet.
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1 minute ago, The_Capt said:
Are you a nihilistic-liberal conservative? Or maybe a hippie-who-grew-up conservative? You gotta whole chaotic neutral vibe going.
(and yes, I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving a month ago as well)
You tell me what you are first, if you're so interested.
Actually, don't, the label game is boring and OT and interminable. Nobody cares.
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1 hour ago, Carolus said:
Conservatives tend to be the first to align with them and help them into power because they tend to be the more emotional and gullible parts of society.
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)
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1 minute ago, Kraft said:
I went through the PVVs election promises, under defense, they say in rosey terms no aid to Ukraine to stop islamic terror in the netherlands. And appearently because the country needs to defend itself
For me that is enough direct evidence.
Fair enough, and I'm happy to drop it, but forgive me if I don't rush for the smelling salts.
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1 minute ago, Kraft said:
If you take Reuters word for it it would spare me going through his cesspool twitter
Btw, I consider any anti-EU politician as harmful, as this weakens Europe as a whole and strenghens US (indifferent) and China, thereby Russia.
Res ipse loquitur, sorry.
Again, I'm willing to believe he hasn't changed his spots, but this is all hearsay.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Well deserved, after their blatant attempted terror attack.
Build that Northern Wall nice and high, Ramaswarmy.