Yskonyn

You realize that this sentiment is really the problem, right?  I mean there is nothing categorically wrong in what the ambassador said for an objective point of view.  Russia has not demonstrated that it will act in good faith during the conduct of this war - the systemic warcrimes are a big hint.  So it would be a very good idea to approach any peace negotiations very carefully.
You do not have to like someone nor agree with their politics, but that does not automatically mean everything they say is incorrect.  Statements or positions need to be weighed against the facts, not affiliations, no matter which end of the spectrum the come from.  
There are exceptions of course, for example if someone has demonstrated habitual lunacy or use of mis/dis-information, sure go ahead and burn them as a source, but the Ukrainian ambassador does not fall into that category as far as we know - unless you have proof beyond her possible post-secondary education?  You are burning her based in affiliation alone or at least it appears that way, and that is intellectually lazy to be blunt.
Finally this whole line of thinking is a significant fracture point that has, and will be exploited by all sorts of players.  It is in fact step 2 in the subversive warfare playbook - widen the fractures that were already there and make them unsealable; the death of compromise.  Step 3 is to harden elements from either side of the fracture into organized and connected collectives that are able to self perpetuate and metastasize - a carcinogenic operation. This is a long standing recipe on how to destroy a society from the inside out.
This is exactly the type of operations Russia did before 2014, and was attempting before this war started.  Every nation that borders Russia is combating this sort of influence.  And it will very likely be what Russia falls back on once this war is over - assuming there is a functioning Russia left.  China is also very good at this game, it is also out of their playbook, but they are much better at it.
So you do not have to agree with the current US president - and sure go ahead and insult him based on ageism. But it is hard to disagree with the results in Ukraine, so far.  This has been one helluva tough one to steer through from a strategic and political level.  And it has not been perfect.  But for navigation through the first real proxy war of the 21st century I gotta give it a B+ so far.
As to the rest of the politics, well you Americans can go argue that - preferably on another thread.

Not sure what the age issue is, he can vote and kill people for his country, he can hold a clearance.  In fact on the surface he looks like a poster child for clearances.  Likely zero foreign contacts.  No wife, no kids, no bills or leverage.  Good Christian boy so likely no illicit or online sexual weirdness.  Likely no addictions record and probably had a spotless criminal record.  The kid was likely clean as a whistle.
Doing a low level job that required him to work on what looked like server maint for classified networks, hence access.  I mean what should the cut off age be?  Of course the military has young people doing this work…we recruit them for it.  I doubt anyone saw this one coming.  The kid was a sad lonely guy who was trying to show off to friends and did something incredibly dumb.  And now he is going to jail for probably about as long as he has been alive.  Now should the US military take a long look at how TS data is stored and maintained, yep.  Are we going to suddenly stop taking teenagers into cyber (there are likely operators with even higher clearances in that bunch)? Nope.

The leaked lone dutch commando collecting 298 patches somewhere in occupied territory🙂

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? 

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. 

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. 

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.
https://gifts-luxury.ru/maintenance/

🤣 Good stuff for a novel, rather fitting for our times I guess. Some radicalized person of a marginalized minority/identity tries to leak secret documents in discord but the other users just keep posting memes and ****posts not even noticing what's in front of their eyes. Apart from the one user not engaging in much posting but downloading the stuff to sell it to on ebay to pay for their medical/energy bills.

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.
 

Ah, ok my bad I thought you saw some demonic form in a democracy lol. 
 
 

I know some about the US history, but the US wasn't the first republic to exist and the architecture of it's democracy doesn't define what is a democracy or republic. Anyway in NL woman were only allowed to vote from ~1922; most democratic countries weren't fully representative democracies until later in the 20th century. 

A republic is generally considered to be democratic / a democracy. Aristocracy is something very different, a voting system in which only the aristocracy gets to vote is nowadays not considered democratic.
Don't know where you got the demoncratic idea from, but it's not cognitive congruent. 
As an example; our country is a representational democracy disguised as a constitutional monarchy. But we could easily transform into a republic by replacing our ceremonial King with a ceremonial President. 
How much powers a president has, how many parties there are, the common law/constitution etc, all of those things ARE NOT defined by whether the form of democracy installed in a governing body of a nation state is a republic or not.

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’.

Is that really a thing? Aren’t the “laws of war” specifically tailored to avoid the hysterical nit picking that would ensue if war and warriors, where subjected to scrutiny under laws actually based on the assumption of decent human behaviour? I mean, common, what kind of world would that be - were people that in power, big and small, were actually held responsible for every single little trifle?

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’.

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’.

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’.

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’.

Except it doesn't work out that way.  I've been in the US civil aerospace industry for a while and we think we do that, but we do lose technologies and capabilities when people retire.  
ETA: and I work with a lot of scientists and engineers from various former soviet states who are well trained, excellent engineers.  But they left starting in the early 90s and never went back - they're starting to retire from here now. The brain and resource drain in Russia is very real.

No we are not.  I have not posted my military resume for some very good reasons, but let’s just say it is extensive.  And there are a lot of other business experts posting here as well.  A guy I work with noted that we are one of the few professions that has to put up with this much amateur armchair quarterbacking - pretty sure chest surgeons are not on a forum trying to explain by-pass surgery to a bunch of guys who played Surgeon Simulator 2, and then get accused of “talking down”. (Who am I kidding it is 2023…)
Ok, so the “curve” you are boiling this down to appears to be a magic 65000 troops to do a break out battle in the south before the RA can (and here you get a bit muddy) - get reinforcements or Chinese-backed capability in place to deny it until the Second Coming?  So a force generation competition “curve” with some pretty vague components.  Or more simply put “the curve of the UA generating Attack faster than the RA can generate Defence” and based on your assessment Ukraine is behind that “curve”?
Ok, let’s just put all the other inconvenient facts about force generation to the side - because why would we need any of that getting in the way? - and roll straight into your simple model.
Yes, your wargaming experience has taught you well….attacking is hard and costly because you have to get out of your hole, move in the open into defences that are by-design aimed at skewing force ratios…at a tactical level.  At operational and strategic level Defence becomes far more costly because of frontage and depth.  Now if all you have to do is defend a narrow defile in Greece - with a ridiculous Scottish accent - your problem is pretty easy.  If you are defending about 800kms of frontage in depth of land you stole, from an opponent with all the ISR and accelerating levels of precision strike while your own AirPower is not working and getting blown up in strange smoking accidents…well let’s just say your Defensive curve is pretty f#cking steep.
So while we are clearly at “Amateur Pearl Clutching Day” again - oh, I tried polite, but the gods of Dunning-Kruger and “I have an internet connection” clearly rule these lands, so we are at “Grasshopper”; unfortunately you are not in range of a well aimed rice bowl being tossed at your head - just employing your adorable little model, Russia’a defensive problem is absolutely enormous.  Like epic historical big.  Way back we did some back-of-cigarette-pack estimates that the RA would need around 1.5 million troops in-country to secure that line in something that resembles completely air tight. And last I checked they are no where near that “curve”.  In fact even employing old Defensive ratios the RA would need around 20k effective troops (meaning at equal or better quality) to defend against this 65k being generated in the UA backfield…in the right location and able to react quickly enough, and supported/enabled, to counter along a 800km front.  So you tell me, in your well informed opinion, just where the RA is on their force  generation curve to solve that one?
Ok, back to UA problem. 65k troops is the number that came out of that EU report.  It is roughly 3-4 Divisions, really a modern Corps and a heavy one.  If the UA had that force today on top of what they are employing to bleed the RA white, this war would likely be over in a few weeks. In all three major UA operational offensives the UA did not need anywhere near that level of mass.  All three were variations on the theme of corrosive systemic collapses that were projected onto the RA, they were done with frankly baffling force ratio closer to 1:1 or in the case of Kyiv completely upside down.  
So what?  Well first off Attack-Defence ratios are in the wind, at least on the UA side.  They retook Kherson at a 1.5:1 attacker to defender ratio, while successfully defended Kyiv at as high as a 1:12 defender ratio.  The RA has had nearly an inverse result, massive overmatch ratios do not work, nor do traditional defensive ones.  The determinative factor appear to be ISR advantage, combined with an ability to generate ersatz Air superiority through deep precision strike.  Bottom line, there is not much good news for the RA with respect to mass.
Next, corrosive strategies are a thing.  The RA did not simply “over-extend” they were made to be “over-extended” by cutting up their entire military system front to back.  Even if they dig in - and based on the ground they have to cover, it will be shallow - they are not immune to whatever this thing is.  All those minefield are useless if the guns covering them are dead or cannot get ammo.  Nor can the RA plug holes if their C2 is slow (it is) their LOCs visible and hittable (they are) and they do not have robust logistics to sustain a counter move (they do not).
So when I hear Ukraine shooting for 65k, I do not think “hmm clearly this is what they need to win this war”, I think “hmm, Ukraine is already thinking about the next one”.  Regardless, based on the steady stream of hints - ATACMS training, whisperers of engineer equipment and a steady stream of troop training going on all over freakin Europe, I am betting the UA is actually ahead of “the curve” for a spring-summer offensive when compared the the RA problem-set.  Will it be easy? Of course not.  Is the UA demonstrating that is is near a breaking point - not even close.  The large drunken guy swinging in the bar right now looks like he also has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and it ain’t Ukraine.
Now I would really like to unpack the southern axis Melitopol problem based on what we do know but that will have to wait a bit.

Lavrov the clown making people laugh with his nonsensical comments. 🤡

I believe that he is referring to the pretty complex factors at play within force generation.  These are more than a simple target number, which is pretty much entirely quantitative; however, even that has to be taken into account with respect to both attrition and requirements within force employment models - more simply put “how many people are Ukraine losing, compared to how many they need, compared to how many they can produce?”  At least three dynamic “curves” there, and we have not even rolled in the curves for the Russian side of this as we have two systems in competition.  More broadly, there is also demographic and other elements of national power at play - your posts seem to suggest that all Ukraine has to do right now is fight, but that have a lot of other things going on to support that, or simply exists as a society, which all take human capacity - running of government, industry and trade etc. (and it ain’t all “the women folk” who are doing it).
And then there is the qualitative dimension.  On paper Russia is producing tens of thousands of invading troops, but what is that troop quality compared to the fewer Ukrainians (if it is indeed fewer)?  This just scratches the curves of troop specialists and critical enablers.  The UA is not just stamping out infantrymen they have to train up engineers, gunners, medics, logistics, Recce, intelligence, HQ staff of all shapes and a sizes - everyone of these have a “curve” of both production and how “well” they are prepared before they are operational.
And then there is equipment production curves versus losses.  These need to be linked to human force generation as we do need to arm them with something.
And then there is “how much is enough” training?  Is qualitative demand being met, that is a feedback loop from the field that constantly needs to be adjusted.  And then there is the qualitative curves effects on quantitative, and vice versa.  This in it self creates a curve over time in comparison of the RA.
And then there is force integration - how much can the existing system absorb effectively….a lotta curves.
Basically he is suggesting, somewhat sarcastically, that your analysis and assessment was a little shallow, and your deductions/conclusions may need a revisit.  The fact that he can do that in one sentence should suggest that the individual has a level of expertise on the subject, and perhaps is worth considering the point.

Don't sleep on the Former Guy's intent on NATO. He's been saying we should pull out for decades and his staff (Kelly, Bolton, Pompeo) said he was absolutely going to do it in a second term. Would that have made sense? Not at all...but sense was never the operative factor.

Thanks for this.
After reading the first paragraph in the article I looked up the author and he's a US journalist with imo, a political agenda, using selective sources to project a framing he wants to put forward. So I stopped reading it
Not that I'm saying all is going as fast as possible in Germany, I don't really know to be honest but probably nor does he.
How to wisely spend 100 Billion Euro out of the blue is not an easy task. Last few days I did hear rather clear language from Scholz / Germany and I understand he is on his way for a private meeting with Biden as we speak. So things are happening at least.

Agreed. Interestingly NL is quite high in those lists considering our size/population. I haven't heard our Defense ministry saying we aren't ready to defend our country, but then again only Germany or Belgium could invade our country by land and given their readiness that should be doable 😜
But there have been plenty of reports of ammo shortages and other issues hindering readiness. And personnel shortages across the line. I have read about actual NATO capability shortcomings, about 'heavy infantry' although I'm not sure / can't remember what exactly the shortcomings are.
I guess the issue for at least NL partly is, what to invest/focus upon? In the cold war our 'role' was more clear, we had our sector in the defense plan for Germany and the required capability was to field a full Corps to keep it short. What should we invest in now? Double our F-35s? Focus on light infantry (KCT, Marines, airmobile, recon, etc), go wild on new (to be developed) lethal-drone-enabled light infantry? Or just get a bit of all of the stuff (not best idea imo). etc.
The politicians don't really have a clue imo and the military is probably largely of the opinion that we should first restore our 'current capabilities' to acceptable levels. Than come the bureaucratic issues, geopolitical interests and how to weigh those, etc. 

Anyway Indeed Putin did more for effective NATO spending than anything else, while I think it's good to stay critical/skeptical but there is at least serious attention for the subject now. It will take some years obviously but in the end I expect we and others in Europe will get their ****e together at least better than the last 20-30 years.

Indeed we are also lacking. Although I think 'specializing' wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily. We don't need a full corps with armored/mechanized brigades and all bells and whistles, but can focus on capabilities less available in NATO/EU. I think the integration with German army is a good idea. 
Hopefully the funding will be improved in sustained fashion and put someone with actual military experience in charge of the modernization/restoration instead of it becoming a political toy and much of the money going to 'advisors' while nothing gets done.