dan/california

There is really only one road for Russia now, and it involves an unmarked grave in a sunflower field in outermost nowhere. To be followed a great deal of it was all his fault we are so sorry, ect.

The Japanese had the same revelation about Hawaii, it is much easier to just buy the place.

Lukashenko's life expectancy is the same as Putin's, plus about ten seconds. That is only if he is lucky. If he isn't Putin will trow him to the wolves in attempt to save himself. either way way I see a lamppost in his future, and a rope.

China at the time didn't have much of an economy for West to destroy, and Vietnam was not exactly in good enough odor for the west to even try. Both of those factors are radically different in this situation. China had absolute control of what their people saw too.

Time for the EU to really drop the hammer, offer a visa to any Russian soldier that surrenders.

Putin may not care about living, everyone around him is getting to ponder their own opinion. Their opinion of their life, and his.

It would be Fascinating to know what Xi is thinking. I think we can assume he is incandescently angry at Putin for being completely incompetent. I Shudder to think about the readiness inspections, and audits the Chinese military is about to go thru. I suspect that keeping phantom troops on the payroll, and many other forms of military/industrial complex corruption just became a shooting offense, maybe worse than that.

I am under the impression they will move them in twenty year old Ladas, or Donkey that are almost that old if they have too.

A better problem than a triumphant Putin having himself crowned Czar, as his army marches on the Baltic states. The fact you can even make this joke implies that Putin's best case scenario is an endless quagmire in Ukraine, and all of the other outcomes are worse for him. Biden, Macron, and the new German Prime Minister whose name I can't spell need to get a planning group going on how to let the Russians down easy if Putin suffers a sudden severe case of lead poisoning, and the new Russian government wants to talk sense. History is turning on hinge in the Kiev suburbs, it would great if some good came out of this god awful mess.

OK Putin is bleeped, this beyond brilliant.

Steve there are a lot of medium sized countries that would be a lot better off if you were the new defense minster.

This is one of the reasons the Germans are being idiots. Grief at saying goodbye to all that Russian money is the other one.

The extent to which CMBS is prophetic is utterly terrifying. Read the novella the U.S. Army armor officer wrote at the beginning of the CMBS rollout. The parts that are not absolutely dead on easily could be by this time next week.

The Germans real bet on Russia was that Stalin's endless terror campaigns had destroyed their will and ability to fight effectively. They were clearly hoping the Russian army would shoot Stalin themselves, and settle for life east of the Ural Mountains. This was not a completely crazy idea, considering Stalin had had most of General Staff, and God alone knows how many other people shot, or worse. It was however fatally wrong.

It would be good the winter war of 2022 doesn't happen, and we have to keep guessing about the performance of all this equipment.

While we are posting stories... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/nyregion/bomber-pilot-christmas-trees.html?surface=icymi-home&fellback=false&req_id=13162058&algo=clicks_raw&variant=holdout_icymi_home&pool=pool/833b02ab-9307-44a7-b218-306ecf7adef0&imp_id=293270069&action=click&module=In Case You Missed It&pgtype=Homepage Quite possibly the last living B-17 pilot.

I spent three minutes killing brain cells before I realized the link was for the WHOLE MOVIE.

I am more than a little convinced the Turks got the important electronic bits from somebody else.

And if you don't have the answer, don't go to the war. The Turk's stuff seemed to work shockingly well in Azerbaijan, and they are not exactly technological giants. Imagine what Taiwan could put out if they set their minds to it.

There is almost no difference, except the current conflict is a few years behind schedule. Since bunch of the equipment is too, it works out perfectly. Except there is a real risk of it actually happening. It would be AWFUL to watch this thing on CNN, as opposed to speculating about it in this friendly little corner of the internet. On the happy talk side that Putin is bluffing, at least mostly, that winter plus Marines, plus brits, plus Poles module can show up any time.

You literally tell the shell two explode X meters after it leaves the muzzle. I think the shell literally counts it rotations and translates that to a distance traveled. so you can take a range finder reading to ditch, berm, or other cover, and tell the shell to explode just past it. It greatly increases the effectiveness against infantry. I think it is one of the tricks the new multi purpose round for the Abrams can play. Several nations have fielded it in several calibers.

Devastating if it worked, But to pound on my new favorite theory, nobody knows how hacked they are. It would be a wee bit embarrassing if the first five hundred turned around and crashed into the airfields they had just been launched from. It does point out the MASSIVE extent to which large scale drone use requires orders of magnitude more anti air assets.

I am in too deep to quit, but bleep there are some rough bits.

So you convinced me to finally try "Three Body Problem". The writing is unbelievably good, but the first quarter of the first book is just a crushingly unpleasant story...

Hey, I am trying to gin up some pressure for a Winter Black Sea Module. Get with the program people.