Yskonyn
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Posts posted by Yskonyn
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So with the way things have been revealed over the last two days concerning the ANG leaker; are we positive this was NOT a psyop afterall now?
Or is there still a thinkable scenario that this whole ordeal has been set up deliberately?
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1 hour ago, Jiggathebauce said:
Amazing that a world power is being humiliated by a kid in the air national guard who liked to share documents with teenage kids, the kind of teenage kids who think it's funny to say the N word with a hard -ER and other slurs.
A key reason why I despise certain gamers, particularly the Eugen Wargame community and prefer the folks at Battlefront who are at least, folks who act like adults
Easy there man. I happen to like Eugens games and I am sure others here do as well.
You’re overly generalizing here. Wood, nails and hammer; the box has been crafted.
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26 minutes ago, kraze said:
Of course I doubt russians would post a real skull on a photo (and they didn't). In fact image itself is not important. What's important is that it's an absolutely legit russian shop.
However the fallout is massive enough that the shop went into full damage control and locked down their website. "We got hacked", "somebody wants to create a negative image of Russia" (like anyone really needs to do it at this point) you know the drill.Yeah who would have expected that, eh?
Its fitting as it put the same ignorance on display that we’ve got as a theme here the last few days with info about who turned out to be the leaker of the secret docs.
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3 minutes ago, kraze said:
And now for something completely different
"Our shop now has the ability to offer you truly unique and actual products.
2022-2023 years pass under the flag of Special military operation, which aims to battle Nazism in Ukraine.
Thanks to our warriors you can order a gift so exotic and unique that it would surprise even the most spoiled collector - things or furniture elements, decorated with bones of killed Ukrainian fascists.
One such item can be an ashtray, made from a skull of a combatant of AFU."
While it is an offensive item, I don’t believe its a real skull on the picture.
Unless it has been treated with some kind of wax or epoxy or some other plastic compound.
Whats the background/origin of the website offering it?
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3 hours ago, Elmar Bijlsma said:
Former Dutch commander of the army has taken a look and came to pretty much the same conclusion. For your DeepL-ing pleasure:
I'm still thinking it is a PsyOp. Still not entirely sure whose, though. Could be Russian, (pro)Ukrainian or 4chan.
This only refers to a small subset of the leaked material.
The WP article claimed documents were leaked steadily over the winter. More than 300 docs.
I find it easy to believe many of these might have been altered, especially after they were put online.
But the volume of leaked stuff seems to be next level. Does this fit with a psy-ops theory?
The story about OG and the sad gamer dude doesn’t seem to be far fetched. Pretty plausible.
Still, this is the reason we need to educate our kids about what implications always being connected might have.
I reiterate to my kids; once you’ve posted something on the web, you have no control over it anymore. So use your brain. Otherwise you’ll be that 17y/o topless girl on the net forever.
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On 4/7/2023 at 10:31 PM, Battlefront.com said:
I had to remind myself what it actually stands for. Found one definition "persons approximately". Military types can tell us if it is a common US term at this level of documentation, as it seems it has its roots in Europe.
Steve
Perhaps its already mentioned; i have not yet read the whole thread.
But ‘pax’ is jargon for passengers in civil aviation . More accurately its used in tourism to indicate a ‘package per person’. Booking if you like.
In my daily job it just stands for a passenger either on board or missing.
I believe it originates from the typical early digital system used in tourism where *lots* of simple codes were used to operate the system.
Remember, this is in a time where bandwidth was at a premium and computer screens displayed in green, amber or white only.
The framework of a system like Galileo (not the GNSS) still uses this old fundament. Just look at a gate agent’s workspace next time you’re at an airport.
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11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Because he is taking part in a genocidal war of aggression?
There should be accountability. The world has supposedly moved on from its past practices. If the US were to go off and deliberately carpet bomb civilians like it did in WW2 and Vietnam, I'd be calling for the pilots and everybody above them to be held accountable for warcrimes. Just because that wasn't past practice doesn't excuse it.
The trials at the end of WW2 established that "just following orders" is not an adequate defense when the accused knew what he was doing was wrong. I am perfectly fine with that standard and I do think it should be universally applied to all conflicts by all nations. The Russian pilot should be held accountable just as much for his actions as a civilian who put C4 on a radio tower.
Steve
If I may, I wanted to come back to this post cause it triggered me, being a pilot myself.
In the civilian aviation industry we have fought hard and long to establish a pretty damn great safety track record.
‘Just Culture’ (or one of its many synonyms) is one of its pillars and means that when things go wrong, personel should feel they can report on it without having fear of being met with discliplinary actions by the company or risk of being proscecuted by law enforcement *as long as there is no intentional harmful or gross negligence* . By gaining a lot of information on what happened and not asking ourselves *who is responsible*, but rather *what can we learn to not have it happen again* is the driving factor and has proven to be successful.Yet, the trend I’ve seen (with the rise of social media to name one big factor) is that this foundation is becoming shaky under the constant pressure of the (percieved?) importance of showing the public you (enter corporate/law/governmeny entity here) have things under control and show all those people who scream for heads to roll that its being managed and they shouldnt worry. Let’s be honest; the prime reaction of most of us will be : ‘who dunnit?!’ not ‘why did it happen’ .
Entities like D.A.’s know very well the the importance of public opinion, by there very nature they will always have an adversarial relationship with the ‘just culture’ way of thinking. And in my experience this slippery slope has angled more steeply toward easy wins by crowd control , which is something I look at with worry.
Integrity is a very important thing. I believe that most people come to their job and not have the active thought to sabotage or neglect their duties willfully. On the contrary, they are doing their job to their full capacity and with good intent.
Now we look at the military pilot. Do you really feel he singlehandedly should be held responsible for his actions he does under order of his superiors while his country is at war? That looks to me like a cheap PR win to the hungry crowd more than a decision based on integrity. He’s the easiest target.
I fully understand an argument might be that he is a thinking individual and should have opposed to carrying out his orders, but that is from the point of view of the other side of which there always be at least 2 in a war. One side approves, the other does not. Its hardly a good point to make generalisations about for how to treat individual soldiers. Besides, don’t we have the Geneva Convention for this (if he ended up being captured)?
So, all german soldier should have been prosecuted individually after WW2? No, the people with the plans were and officers and officials propagating those plans were and then a country was put under sanctions to ‘punish the collective’.
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9 hours ago, MSBoxer said:
I have said it before, and I will say it again
This is the ONE thing I agreed on with our former President. Our NATO partners needed to contribute more to their own defense and live up to the NATO agreements. Relying on the US is no defense plan, sure we would live up to our agreement, but there must be some kind of local contribution to hold the line, or at least slow the advance until everyone was up to speed.
What I DID NOT agree with was his threat to leave NATO unless everyone snapped to attention and caved into his tantrum.
Well said and I fully agree we have been taking US protection for granted while making our own defense a ‘political toy’ as Lethaface rightly puts it.
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11 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:
Well, this is what you get when government has cut defense funding for the last decade or two. The Netherlands presides in a similar state and I am sure many EU countries have a similar sorry military status. IF it would come to a conventional war where borders need to be defended on a per country basis.
The (political) narrative here in the Netherlands has been that we don't need a conventional war defensive military, but that we are better off with smaller scale but more high tech military in order to assist in NATO ops. (in a nutshell), despite ongoing pleas from within our military to act otherwise.
Luckily the narrative seems to be changing and we have NATO. And I don't see a conventional war coming into western europe anytime soon either. But I don't think there is any discussion anymore about the need to bolster military assets and funding for the coming years in NATO countries.
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11 minutes ago, DesertFox said:
Maybe some of our friends from the netherlands can confirm this or shed some light what´s going on here?
Doch jetzt werfen niederländische Medienberichte ein anderes Licht auf die Situation! Verteidigungsministerin Kajsa Ollongren (55) hatte dem Parlament am Donnerstag mitgeteilt, dass 18 Leopard-2-Panzer, die die Niederlande von Deutschland leasen, der Ukraine NICHT zur Verfügung gestellt würden. Begründung: ein Nein der Bundesregierung!
Translation: But now Dutch media reports shed a different light on the situation! Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren (55) told parliament on Thursday that 18 Leopard 2 tanks leased by the Netherlands from Germany would NOT be made available to Ukraine. Reason: a no from the federal government!
Blockiert der Kanzler wieder Panzer-Lieferungen? | Politik | BILD.de
According to several news outlets this is correct.
Aparently the German Government did not agree and therefore Ollongren cannot push through. Now dutch minister of defense Ollongren has stated that we will buy over 100 Leo 1's (together with Germany as far as I understand) for Ukraine use.Most reports are quite short and without extensive explanation however.
EDIT: Aragorn2002 calls BS on the report. Perhaps he can elaborate?
BNR news reported it to be correct. Seems like a reliable source?EDIT2: On further examination; it might be a hassle of words; aparently we lease the 18 Leo 2's from Germany and the plan was to buy them in order to then dispatch them to Ukraine.
Germany claims Netherlands did not make it known to Germany that we would like to deliver Leo2's to Ukraine, whereas the report tells us that Ollongren told parliament that we cannot deliver the Leo 2's because the German government has decided so.
Yet the German Government claims it was not aware of any such intentions and certainly did not block any request. They also hint at discontent within the dutch armed forces about buying Leo's to then make available to Ukraine.
Reeks of bureaucratism or communication error or just bull**** storymaking. -
14 minutes ago, Butschi said:
I don't really know how different the various parts of the Netherlands are. Germany is a federal state and we all (ok, most, ignore those Bavarians...) feel as Germans first while (mostly, Saxony is certainly far less well regarded than Bavaria) not trying to suppress our regional backgrounds. EU shouldn't (and doesn't) dictate culture and such. But this "we want to keep our cultural identity, EU should be about economics and nothing more" is often just an excuse for national egotism. And that is something we cannot afford. If we continue to be a more or less loose collection of countries with economic ties, this is a recipe for international insignificance. We have to learn to be a united entity and I think that will only work if we see ourselves as Europeans first and German, Dutch, Polish, you name it, second. On the international floor, each European country by itself is probably as influential as the Texas or California - well, some more like Connecticut, I think.
For a small country like Holland we have suprisingly many subcultures, just look at the history of the Netherlands and it's immediately clear. Friesland, Limburg, 'Randstad' vs more rural areas all have very different 'cultures' and worldly views. Still we are united as a single country.
And that's my point as well; you flatten the point to just being one of economical ties with regards to the sentiment of EU, but that's not what I mean. I agree with your statement that if that were the case, it would be a recipe of international insignificance.
If we look at the current situation and how the EU operates with regards to the Russian aggression I think we can agree that its not just economic ties that make the EU work.
But the narrative of 'being European' has changed over the past years from being this utopian united people towards a view of more regards for the people themselves that should make up this 'European identity' and how we can leverage this to make the EU work (even better). And that's a good thing imo.
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15 minutes ago, Butschi said:
And that is really sad. Somewhere between 2000 and 2010 we had a phase where many people I know felt more like Europeans with roots in their specific countries. I was in an academic environment then that was very international to start with, so take that with a pinch of salt, I guess.
I don't think it's sad at all. I think we have been trying to push square pegs into round holes for a long time.
The EU works much better if we recognise we are different people and use this for cross-pollination to advance universally as the EU while still keeping mind that we all have different roots, social constructs, habits, etc. as nationalities. Brussels outstretched paws to influence national politics have been reduced in a last years and I feel the strain has been reduced and the sentiment towards the EU has improved, at least here in Holland.
A cooperation rather than a unification works better. At least I think so.
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2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:
Although Poland at the moment is trying to picture itself as the frontier of Western values, it is justifiably seen in the rest of Europe as undemocratic, self centred, greedy and more and more dictatorial. This is one of the biggest threats to European unity for the future and a factor the rest of Europe can't afford to ignore. Combine that with the confusing political situation in the US and the uncertainty after the next elections there and one may begin to understand the European dilemma.
When it comes to unity I don't have to explain to an American how complicated and difficult that can be. All in all I think the EU has performed a very impressive show in that respect since ww2, unparalled in modern history. The same goes for the European aid to Ukraine, which is equally unparalled. Countries weakening their own defence to strengthen that of another country. I call that damned impressive.
Excellent first point!
And as you said a little later; there also is a EU after this war to be considered.(And Huba has a great point too, Poland is certainly not the 'only problem' the EU has. No discussion here.)
On 'Countries weakening their own defence'; is this actually the case? I think we've also establsihed in this thread that were it not for western equipment to be made available to Ukraine the flow of this war might have gone very differently, did we not?
So in what manner is 'our defense' linked to 'Ukraine's defense' in that sense? And I am not talking about the front here specifically, but the broader aspect.
In terms of territory countries like the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Greece or Spain and Portugal don't need to protect their borders directly from Russian aggression (at this point anyway), but I can imagine Germany might feel differently about this. Poland is quite clearly in a different position as well.But that's why we have NATO, don't we? It's not about the individual countries.
The criticism about how effective the EU is, how much power Brussel has and how much we hate Brussel deciding for us on a national level is easy in peace time, but I am glad to see when the **** hits the fan the EU seems to be several levels more efficient and with resolve than I had anticipated.It might still come across as a very slow moving political entity, but if you pauze for a moment and reflect on how many countries are involved, I find it rather impressive actually.
Also let's not forget the EU is still very young as an entity and has been under constant change and evolution.We've discussed before what a 'European' is. A term often used by our American friends. Seeing Europe is visiting Madrid and Amsterdam in one trip. No it doesn't, really. I am trying to illustrate my meaning here, not trying to be abrasive.
My gauge is that most people don't 'feel' they are 'a' European. They are Spanish, Dutch, German, etc, but are part of Europe. Not as cultural identity, but as a political, military and monetary alliance of sorts. -
54 minutes ago, JonS said:
IKR? And the A-10 even has two engines to the P-51's single Merlin. Still not enough though.
Pff, with the amount of Brrrrrt the Hog has we shouldn’t be concerned about speed.
And the amount of Brrrrrt the Hog has on display definitely makes a Mustang blush, so cut it out will you?
Going Brrrrt even makes the bird loose 10 knots or so. That’s freakin’ cool and NOT something to be ashamed off.
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NRC news (dutch) reports about (further)integration of dutch army elements into german army.
Division ‘Schnelle Kräfte’ has the 11th ‘Luchtmobiele Brigade’ (aparently already since 2014)
1. Panzer Division gets 43th Mechanized Brigade
10. Panzer Division gets 13th Light Brigade
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/01/31/nederland-en-duitsland-bundelen-hun-landmachten-a4155834
As I read it due to funding cuts and staff shortage the idea began as a win win to ‘plug holes’ in both armies, but the project has expanded in scope over time and ambition for the future, but support units like engineers, medical personel, etc as well as special forces will not be part of the integration.
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7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
That second one looks like another RPG, you can see it come in from the right. Those look like HEAT rounds with the slug flying off after the initial explosion.
Sucks to be them. Don’t see any Red Crosses, so this is a righteous shoot, but still nasty.
Perhaps not a great place to discuss gory details, but the bodies look rather intact in the aftermath shots. Is this to be expected?
Is their gear keeping the fleshy bits in?
I’d expect serious dismemberment after such a hit.
If this is not the place to talk about this then that’s absolutely understood and I digress, but I cannot help being curious about the ‘(bio)technical’ side of this, for the lack of a better term.
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We have now reached page 1985 of this thread. Rather symbolic if you ask me.
Keep the great discussion/analyses and what not coming guys. I am not able to contribute much, but I learn lots every day and am amazed at the knowledge at display in this community. Truely something special and not something I’ve seen in any other gaming community.
For our Ukranian members; strength and courage!
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Now that the series has been out for quite a while we unfortunately also have to deal with a rather fragmented mod repository which makes certain mods hard to find.
Some famous modders have left the community for greener pastures elsewhere while others are still creating content.
So, what are your mods you have for all game in the series that you find essential mods to make the game even better or prettier for you?
I’ll start:
-HQS 5.0 for that added oompf in sounds (tweaked to remove the background ambient sound tracks with explosions and remove all music)
-Drakenlorde’s HQ Flames
-Vein’s special effects (other than flames)
-Rambler’s Trees (and Bocage)
-Half height horizon mods
-Juju’s interface mods
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Who are those airline people anyway? Some look like stewardesses. If so I have a hard time believing Putin would have a banquet for airline crew and discuss the things he supposedly says in the undertitle.
I’ve never had a meeting with our PM briefing us on security issues ever and I don’t see it happening in wartime either.
Anyway, this is assuming these people are airline crew, which obviously I don’t know.
Does anyone know who these people are?@Zveroboy1 makes a good point to boot, though.
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Shell’s statement on the buying of Russian oil against low prices.
They will donate the full profit to Ukranian support efforts.
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I see discussions about fear of WMD deployment on Kiev when talking about the various reasons for NATO holding back, but I think a more accurate reality is fear of WMD deployment on cities like London, Riga, Berlin, Warschau or even Amsterdam that is one of the reasons for NATO to hold back.
But the fear of starting WW3 and employment of WMD on capitals of NATO members is real as far as I can sense from national media so far.
Enforcing a no fly zone and or creating a safe zone in West Ukraine by NATO would be seen by Putin as a direct declaration of war from the NATO members and if he’s indeed as cold and vindictive as he is made out to be, what’s stopping him from pressing the red button ?
Wasting London is a far from his bed show, but would make him immortal and a sure marter should he be terminated clandestinely. Mission accomplished for him either way? -
News here reports a cease fire of 5 hrs from 8 am onwards to let civilians evacuate the mariupol area.
The news also mentioned that defense experts (dutch) expect an intensifying effort to consolidate the south east area and create the ‘land bridge’ between Donetsk and Mariupul area toward the coast as well as a siege of Kiev.
Now, the first part seems likely, but from what I read here in this thread the Russians are far from besieging Kiev properly so far? Can anyone elaborate?
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Finally was able to catch up in this thread.
First and foremost I would like to wish every forum member affected by the war all the strength, courage and hope in this awful time! Especially to our Ukranian friends! Slava Ukraine!
Thanks everyone for contributing. It has been a total surreal experience to be able to see news popping up in this thread often well before mainstream media picked up on it.
Also thanks to this great community to keep sharing the extensive knowledge that’s been on display here while also keeping the discussion on topic, free from slander, attacks on each other and trolling (at least it never escalated). It goes to show how excellent and mature this community is.
I have little military knowledge to inject into the conversation, but I wanted to add the above to show my respect.
Let’s hope the war will end sooner rather than later and we can all go back to playing games instead.
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The LOS check per waypoint and/or using the Target command for it takes a little getting used to, but it’ll become second nature after a while.
Still, I do agree that the game would be more comfortable to play if there was a little more feedback on LOS.
For example, weather conditions like fog or rain are not visible on the map in terms of graphical effects (haze) limiting the range units can see. Same goes for nighttime.
Having some kind of overlay function where LOS is calculated and presented as shaded areas or something to that effect, would be a great quality of life improvement imo.
Same goes for introducing haze or night time fading.
For the modern titles which have units with thermal vision it would then be awesome to have spotted units light up realistically in that haze when a spotting unit gets selected.
Just dreaming here.
Announcing "Whose Turn Is It?" a PBEM turn management program
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
@IanL I am trying to install WTII , but it won't install unless I download Java 7 JRE from Oracle.
I've migrated to the Adoptium Temurin branch of open source Java, due to the perceived security issues with older Java runtimes, so I was wondering if you can make WTII accept this runtime and stop it from forcing an old JRE download.