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womble

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Everything posted by womble

  1. As an adjacent point to this, ricochets are dangerous to everyone, not just "those other guys". Generally, you don't need to worry about sub-50cal rounds causing friendly fire, but as soon as they bounce off something, they forget who fired 'em.
  2. Or maybe you're doing it right! I don't know what circumstances will trigger a given combination of soft and hard factors in a team to persuade them that leaning out to fight is a Good Idea, but I'd suspect that it's not a first-choice activity. Perhaps you're just keeping your pTruppen in comfortable situations where they don't feel that plinking away with their small arms is a particularly useful contribution.
  3. Maybe actually read and understand the article and find the difference between what it said, which is probably based on truth and what you said which is arrant nonsense. Hint: "The Internet" is not, by and large, dependent on satellites. Neither are cell phones. See those masts everywhere? They're not satellites, and they're not linked by satellites. May be true, but it is irrelevant to most day-to-day usage of the Internet, at the individual, corporate and governmental levels.
  4. Rubbish. International banking comms isn't reliant on satellites. They'd have to start snipping oceanic cables as well, and that would, I believe, go hard for Russia, and they know it. As, indeed, would taking out communications satellites, but probably to a lesser degree.
  5. I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. And so on.
  6. Way to miss The Captain's point. You seem to have ignored the last part of his sentence A recurring tenet of The_Capt's treatises is that "War is negotiation". He's no bleeding-heart liberal who thinks this can be "talked out" round a table at this time. The whizz-bangs are doing the talking right now.
  7. It depends entirely on what they're used to (try and) hit. Same as any other weapon. If the target's in civilian areas (but still legit in and of itself), then the CEP of the strike system orter be smaller than the target. I'm guessing the S-200 isn't incredibly precise, so you probably shouldn't lob 'em at small targets with potential collateral damage right nearby.
  8. I think the point is that the prospect of surrounding doesn't have to be quite as clearly visible to the Russians as it might need to be for other forces before "Run Away!" becomes the order of the day. Whether that's because of their lack of confidence in being relieved before being overrun or lack of confidence in being able to withdraw in an organised manner under any greater levels of pressure, or their lack of confidence in their flanks actually holding, is arguable. I don't think we can argue that it's "cowardice", just a greater level of "operational prudence". Which makes me think that Bakhmut might currently be an exception to the general Russian rule. We've seen reports that the place is now surrounded (at least by fires) by UKR, and still the holding RUS haven't been withdrawn.
  9. They really don't like being surrounded, do they?
  10. And the frequency of bogs... outside the urban areas, that is.
  11. I suspect they weren't taken to the Falklands at least partly because of the appreciation that the PBI was going to have to walk "a fair distance" over "unhelpful" terrain in them, and at that point, they'd just become litter in a Falklands bog... NI operations didn't involve 30 mile a day yomps very often, AIUI.
  12. Most of the rest of what you say is at least adjacent to, if not the absolute Truth*, which is better than a lot of commentators. I disagree with the quoted bit, though. The "threat"** was the excuse for some plain, old-fashioned Imperialism. Russia already has borders with NATO members. Who that excuse was aimed at is debatable, but it feeds into the whole "external enemy" narrative the Kremlin has always used to unify their people behind their Kleptocracy. It panders to the prejudices of the polities that feel ill-treated by the First World, and gives the Arch Cynics of China and India "plausible deniability" for their disinterest. The accession of Finland to NATO hasn't triggered Armageddon, which is suggestive that "Moar NATO" wasn't the problem. The problem with brinksmanship is that it's difficult to be sure where the brink actually is. Assertions that one thing or another is definitely the thing that will bring about the Apocalypse are largely pointless, which is why the gradualist approach is the only way to escalate. The gradual approach also has the advantage that it can often have the effect of moving the opposition's "red lines" over time. Putin's Russia did that a lot before March '22, to great effect. * as I see it, at least ** which hasn't been real since at least 1950
  13. Or just get Lloyds to stop insuring those bottoms, so no organised port will let them dock, and they won't be allowed through Suez/Panama.
  14. Apart from the dubious premise that "tiny city states" will be the outcome, are Russia's nukes actually that dispersed? I doubt that too. The security implications of "penny packet"ing them out are... significant. But beyond the matter of guarantees, what else can such a microstate do with 'em? They could sell 'em to Iran, but that way they don't get guarantees either, and "The West" can pay more than Iran or other "bad actors" who don't already have serviceable nukes. I don't think the concept makes the danger of proliferation much worse. For "proper countries" which secede from the Russian Union, guarantees would have to be on the table, along with many other incentives (green ones).
  15. Don't forget that Turkiye is in NATO. So while they might not be "Western", they're connected. And While Erdogan has turned his face a little more westwards since his re-election, he's still the closest thing to a friend of Russia sharing any Black Sea coast.
  16. I don't think that's necessarily a worry. Nukes take a lot of money and expertise to keep viable (both their delivery systems and the warheads). Smaller fragments will have other priorities, and the raw components of a standby nuke aren't even particularly useful as dirty bombs, which in turn aren't very useful as a deterrent. I think The Rest of the World will be able to put together a package that will satisfy the new polities. One thing those packages will probably have to include will be guarantees rather than the (largely worthless, and they knew it) "assurances" which were all Ukraine got.
  17. They've already walloped the Odessa grain terminal and stated that the grain deal is over. Looks like they don't care what the potential purchasers of Ukrainian grain think of them. And now they're declaring unrestricted warfare against traffic into or out of Ukrainian ports... Trying to gain escalation dominance? Hoping to prove that nothing they do will provoke Western escalation? Will they really fire into Turkish-flagged vessels? Maybe they're just reserving the right to board and inspect. I'm curious what the Russians mean by: (as the article linked above puts it) "...demands for Russian exports had not been honoured." Were some sort of concessions made on Russian exports as part of the grain deal? The language is odd, since demands are not honoured, commitments are. Demands are acceded to, or permitted or some such, not "honoured". Maybe that's just linguo-cultural translation, or maybe it's indicative of the Kremlin's solipsistic attitude that all of their wants are automatically promises made by other people to fulfill them...
  18. In spite of all their "Russia Stronk" rhetoric, they still need people to buy their grain and petrochem. Cutting off Ukrainian grain will piss off the people who are currently their "friends", who buy that stuff. They might go elsewhere, and that's a risk that Russia maybe doesn't want to take. As has been said upthread, the Russians have threatened to take their bat and ball home on this one several times, and the one time they did, it made no difference and they slunk back out to play with the other kids a few days later. Sea Mines are equal opportunity nasties with a propensity for wandering off from where they're deployed; they're almost as likely to sink Russian bottoms carrying Russian grain as they are to sink Ukrainian or neutral ships carrying Ukrainian grain, especially if there are Turkish or other "neutral" nations providing mine sweeping services.
  19. SEAD Then some more SEAD Then some airpower to eviscerate logistics and C4ISR and degrade the actual fighting power covering the chosen paths through the fields. Some of this could be going on during the SEAD phase, but it'd really kick in once the AD umbrella has been rendered ineffective. They'd have air cover in a position to counter RUS TacAir, and enough precision long range fires to crimp RUS artillery. At least in theory...
  20. I thought we'd gotten used to the idea that Ukraine had extended the concept almost to "Uber Artillery", with large "pools" of tubes which would be tasked according to availability and mission, based on requests from whatever unit is asking.
  21. Aye, the driver can't be gunner too, so you have to mount someone up to use the on-board MG. It largely doesn't matter who That said, like all APCs, be careful about putting them into direct fire roles: there are many things that can easily kill them. I'd generally use them to maintain suppression that's been achieved by other, less fragile units, from keyhole positions. The 50mm mortar is an infantry weapon. You'll see it scattered through other formations that don't have Universal Carriers at all. To use the ones in the carrier, you need to mount up an infantry element, then use the Acquire command. Don't forget to take the ammo too Then dismount them, and it'll be available for the infantry element to use.
  22. I'd very much doubt that any dislocation or distraction on the northern border with Belarus will reach the southern operational area. Small probes won't hold any ground. They might be able to inflict casualties on the local defensive regiments at a "favourable rate" (or they might not; those local defense battalions aren't exactly short of combat experience either), but they won't be able to drive them wholesale towards Kyiv, especially if they've no heavy support, having handed all the gear back to the "regulars".
  23. Well, he might if his own party don't manage to find him a new seat* (his will not be re-elected, due to vanishing in recent constituency boundary changes)... But seriously, no, I have no expectation, or even hope, of the offer (even if everyone in the world agreed he'd be the bestestest Minister). * So Labour could offer him a Peerage and Lords are allowed to hold Cabinet posts, I believe. No response because British Domestic Politics is off-topic, and this is going on too long.
  24. The dispersal of Wagner might've been part of the agreement. Their expertise is sorely needed. Perhaps they'll be distributed as cadre to existing units that need some on-the-job-instruction. It's almost a ready-made NCO corps (or at least it might look like one to someone unfamiliar with the actual job requirements of a "decent" NCO corps). Cadre is one of the missions that mercenaries traditionally fulfill, after all. Also/in combination, weren't Russia sending troops to Belarus to train? So a camp of battle-hardened Wagnerites there might be a good start on a twisted version of a Russian Fort Moore.
  25. If Wagner truppen are being signed up to the regular Russian line battalions, they'll need something to fight with. Maybe it's more a transfer from a "unit" that's being stood down to units that will absorb the personnel from that retired org heading. It's not really resupply if they already had those things, lost the use of them for a chunk of time and then got them back. And they did have the use of them, under Wagner's aegis, until Prig went all huffy.
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