Peregrine

I haven't done it for a long time but before CM the best combat simulators were flight simulators and it has been a long time since I have played in one but if I wanted to fly as close as possible to something else in the air the was going much slower than me you would sort of do what the Russian pilot did. They wanted to dump fuel on it so you have to pass close and above it. You have to see it so you would start at a lower elevation and climb towards it with your aim point being just above it by the distance you wanted to miss. Being slightly off axis also gives yourself more space to miss it. The fastest way to move yourself in the air jumpy fast wise is to rip back in the stick which means you probably want to be well above your stall speed which may exacerbate the speed difference. You only have two hands so one hand is one the stick and the other dumping fuel at some point so its not on the throttle.

Drone was 100s of km from any sort of area with active combat so pretty much everything you said it was doing it was not doing.

And if there is a change of administration with the policy of "no more stupid foreign wars" they will be able to concentrate their trillion dollar military budget purely on domestic ones saving money on education budgets even further. Still a little bit of geography but its a color coded red/blue that most already have some familiarity with.

Lithium mining includes the separation of the valuable resources from the uneconomic remains of the core, known as gangue. After this process, some materials referred to as tailings remain. Some of the most common mining wastes are sulfuric acid discharge and the radioactive uranium byproduct. This is quick quote from "Lithium Mining" google. This is getting off-topic and much more West versus China than Russian (because they have done such a spectacular job of making themselves irrelevant). I think the answers are pretty obvious that what western companies can do with radioactive toxic sludge and what Chinese miners can do. This applies to a lesser extent to manufacturing as well. You could say things are done in China because it is "cheaper" but a more apt description is when it comes to mining/manufacturing they can do it in a much more exploitive manner without short term repercussions and the longer term ones are being can kicked down the road. China might show the West one day this thinking is wrong but yet another leader for life attitude says to me they are going to make the same mess of themselves as all the others do.

Rare earth elements are not actually that rare but you basically can't find a mother lode of them as they are very spread out and not found in concentrated seams. The mining also produces a lot of toxic by products. This is why China dominates is because they don't have proper environment laws and creating toxic moonscapes isn't as frowned upon. If they had similar standards to the rest of the world they would not have their current dominance. I do not know how long it would take to go from not mining a significant amount to producing required quantities if unfriendliness stop supply.

I am eating squirrel and these guys are getting steak dinners walking to their trench.

Don't forget to shut the hatch when you leave.

Cheap shot. Wind tunnel.

Extraordinary claims only require an extraordinary amount of yelling nowadays.

Yet more evidence Petey the Sexual Harassment Panda is required.

Basically the point of my post. I do not understand the Russian ability to project their power beyond their borders with ground forces very well but it sort of looks like they have always wanted to since Putin established himself and have pretty much constantly antagonized all their neighbours and others up to their limits of this power. Ukraine is obviously and overextension of their capabilities but hey a scorpion is going do what a scorpion does.

Most likely the same thing that happened last time Russia fell apart. Elements of the west / UN that do not want small unstable states being nuclear armed will give some guarantees of their borders against Russian aggression in return for giving up the nuclear weapons.

At about 1:13 you can see what looks like hand movement at the edge of the covered part of the trench. It looks the same as Ukrainian Rambo with one guy moving around fighting and another a little tucked away.

My trip to Hobbiton is sounding a bit shaky. Sounds like they have an Orc problem too.

What military leader of any quality would show a pile of his own soldiers and say it's not my fault.

I remembered the theme music too. With the Russian composers whose music has spanned the decades/centuries they sort of succeeded in spite of their system and to a degree their success was also by bucking the Russian system and adopting aspects from the West into their works. Simplistic view but sort of true. They were definitely pretty special individuals.

This one is great. I would expect even your average non-tank person would enjoy it. Pretty much every tank of note. Can't climb on them though.

Tom Clancy novel too. Israel lost a nuke I think.

Iron is old fashioned. Tungsten curtain is more modern.

Bizarre. I obviously can't tell how heavy the road use and it could be a part of a large cemetery but if it isn't a minor traffic accident could be "I swerved to miss a dog and run over a half dozen war graves". Dumb and sad.

Missed opportunity to make millions and millions of blue and gold minions.

He will need to do it in pencil or have lots of space left of the page to add some more.

Don't know a definitive history or how useful they are but both our biggest telcos have offered civilian satellite phones for at least 20 years. You obviously need to "see" a satellite and not sure of the historical or current coverage.

If a person wrote a broadly simplistic description of what Afghanistan looked liked as a nation state (governance, culture, GDP etc) in 2000 and then a description of what Afghanistan looked like in 2022 it should be obvious how little even a stupendous amount of money and violence can accomplish no matter how desperate or well intentioned. Hopefully post loss, post-Putin Russia (he will die someday) will start a transformation process down a more constructive path but hoping that external forces can significantly and definitively inflict and positive and lasting change is wrong.

USSR ceased to exist, Russia did not. I do not think it likely Russia as some sort of country without some insane amount of violence will cease to exist in the near term. If you can picture a reasonable scenario where the current borders of Russia are significantly different than today feel free to share it. In my post I probably should have more clearly described USSR and Russia as differing entities in their modern history.