womble

Well it kinda does change the rationale.  The fact that you are seeing this as a hard "pro" or "against" DPICM situation is evidence that this entire thing has been hijacked by slippery principle as opposed to reality.  I for one am highly against the use of DPICM in urban areas on a low-level conflict/counter insurgency, such as Southern Lebanon.  I am, however, for their legal use in Southern Ukraine when the UA is running out of ammunition and needs to sustain an offensive to keep momentum or risk stalling out into a frozen conflict.  See that?  I can actually have two opposed opinions on the use of these weapons based on context.  Anyone who is able to do that is living in the real world as we try and balance the hope and desperation.
If, however, one stands on principle regardless of context, then they are "pearl clutching" and being self-righteous in my opinion.  Tossing around "but the children!" arguments that lead to hypocritical cul de sacs is just as bad as blood thirsty genocidal sentiments we have also clamped down on.  Of course being someone who has had spent their adult life going out into the world and dealing with the worst while 99.9% of my home population is more worried about whether Taylor Swift is going to do a concert in Toronto has likely jaded me somewhat.

It's not just The_Capt that wants it. It's Ukraine, too. Who do you think would be the preferred target of fractious warlords (other than each other) with nukes? Who's right next to said warlords if they start lobbing nukes at each other?
That is, if you assume there's an actual threat of thermonuclear explosion. Once central authority has collapsed, who's going to be able to actually maintain these things in working order, and bypass the failsafes that certainly exist to stop random custodians of Armageddon from getting frisky already? Assuming that Putin doesn't press the Big Red Button (or perhaps that him attempting to press it is what gets him a Makarov Ear Wax Removal (9mm or .380).
Perhaps the bigger worry for Ukraine is a spiteful Putin (or whomever) giving the launch order as a desperate attempt to "win" the "SMO". Whether it's a Tac Nuke or something bigger, that's a city, probably Kyiv. Maybe several; depends on how spiteful the launch-order-giver is feeling, how many fail to launch, how many get intercepted and how many fizzle. Whether the risk/result numbers make it "better" to have a rapid win with the risk of nukes or a slow frog-boil where nukes aren't a consideration is something that's very hard to know, and we certainly should be grateful we don't have to personally enumerate that dreadful calculus.
Obviously, to a rational view, nuking anywhere isn't going to get Putin a win, but we keep having to remind ourselves that our definition of rational doesn't necessarily apply to the criminal insane asylum that is the Kremlin.

This is such a nothing burger. Comments were taken out of context. From a video interview by Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the military committee of NATO. So the guy is not even "the guy" to ask about this.
 This guy loosely quoting states that F-16 is such a big and slow undertaking it will likely come in time for the current offensive. Absolutely nothing controversial here...
"The discussion on the fighters is an important one, but it will not be solved in the short term for this counter-offensive."
"Training those pilots, training the technicians, making sure there is a logistic organization that can actually sustain these aircraft will not be available before this counter-offensive."
"We shouldn’t mix the two discussions – I think it’s important and understandable that Ukraine asks for these fighter aircraft – but we should not mix it with the counter-offensive discussion now."

This is a problem, aye. And promising though they seem, from what simulations can tell us, the F-16/AMRAAM combo isn't quite up to it.
What sortof puzzles me is that an ATGM (with a massive warhead to punch through MBT armour) can be effectively launched at 10km range, but "mobile" SAMs struggle to manage that sort of engagement envelope. Starstreak has a ceiling, AIUI of 10km, but won't reach out that far (I don't know the dynamics of why) laterally. Or perhaps Startstreak is rare or fills a more important niche in the AD complex than "Keeping the AHs off our spearpoint formations".
But it seems like it should be a fairly important programme to develop a relatively portable missile that at least matches the range of the threats that the tip of the spear is going to face, and mount it on a chassis that can keep up and survive in the general environment the tip of the spear is expected to exist in. And then send them all to Ukraine.

Given the RUS understandable aversion to being cut off, surrounded and wiped out, I'm not sure why UKR would even start poking around in actual Bakhmut "proper" rather than continuing to push back the flanks and make the place a salient that can be bypassed and reduced/ignored later. It's not like there are any civilians there whose suffering needs to be taken into account. Let the invaders starve, if they don't just give up, assuming they don't withdraw once in danger of envelopment.

And large chunks of that money are kept outside Russia. The international community needs to decide that that should all be turned over to Ukraine. London, aka Moscow-on-Thames is one of the greatest concentrations of illicitly-gotten wealth, and the UK government should be leading the way in recovering that money for Ukraine. The oligarchs might feel differently about Putin when his antics have chopped a zero off the end of their fortune.

There's going to have to be some surgery done on the globalised economy. The richer nations have largely managed to amputate Russia from their energy supply chains. Currently, Russian petro is really cheap  because the market for it is small. And China is the largest beneficiary. If "we" got serious, we could buy Saudi oil and gas at market prices and resell it at a loss to the nations that are still dependent on Russian oil. Or we could "persuade" the rest of the extraction industry to increase output to compensate for the loss of Russian hydrocarbons. The bonanza of low priced oil would end, but it wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the war.
None of what needs to be done is without cost. None of it is easy. But letting Russia keep lobbing missiles at a liberated Ukraine is costly, and difficult. At the very least, it maintains the "excuse" that "there's a war on" that people keep using to justify ****ty economic and environmental decisions, and throws Ukraine under a bus.
Maybe Russia will "come to its senses" in some manner (change of regime) once UKR achieve the humiliation of the invading armies, but it's going to need pressure in that direction, if it's even at all possiblbe.
They might try, and if the political will is there to impose radical sanctions, they might find it costly to their ability to interdict it, since it's an obvious consequence which the sanction-imposing nations would have to have a plan to deal with, in order to avoid embarrassing climbdowns. Said ability to interdict would be limited anyway if the BSF can't use Sevastopol as their base any more. We are talking about a scenario where RUS has been completely thrown out of Ukraine, after all.

And large chunks of that money are kept outside Russia. The international community needs to decide that that should all be turned over to Ukraine. London, aka Moscow-on-Thames is one of the greatest concentrations of illicitly-gotten wealth, and the UK government should be leading the way in recovering that money for Ukraine. The oligarchs might feel differently about Putin when his antics have chopped a zero off the end of their fortune.

There's going to have to be some surgery done on the globalised economy. The richer nations have largely managed to amputate Russia from their energy supply chains. Currently, Russian petro is really cheap  because the market for it is small. And China is the largest beneficiary. If "we" got serious, we could buy Saudi oil and gas at market prices and resell it at a loss to the nations that are still dependent on Russian oil. Or we could "persuade" the rest of the extraction industry to increase output to compensate for the loss of Russian hydrocarbons. The bonanza of low priced oil would end, but it wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the war.
None of what needs to be done is without cost. None of it is easy. But letting Russia keep lobbing missiles at a liberated Ukraine is costly, and difficult. At the very least, it maintains the "excuse" that "there's a war on" that people keep using to justify ****ty economic and environmental decisions, and throws Ukraine under a bus.
Maybe Russia will "come to its senses" in some manner (change of regime) once UKR achieve the humiliation of the invading armies, but it's going to need pressure in that direction, if it's even at all possiblbe.
They might try, and if the political will is there to impose radical sanctions, they might find it costly to their ability to interdict it, since it's an obvious consequence which the sanction-imposing nations would have to have a plan to deal with, in order to avoid embarrassing climbdowns. Said ability to interdict would be limited anyway if the BSF can't use Sevastopol as their base any more. We are talking about a scenario where RUS has been completely thrown out of Ukraine, after all.

I'm sure diplomatic efforts are under way to persuade those putative "friends" that it's actually in their better interests to remain on good terms with the West, and incidentally help maintain the rules-based world order from which they have benefitted from since about 1945. If Russia survives being kicked out of Ukraine in any form which retains the will and means to cause Ukraine grief in a material (rather than simply political) sense, that tooth is, to torture your metaphor some, rotted below the gum line, out of reach of the pliers, and no one wants to go in with the drill because the patient has a knife to the dentist's belly that they will definitely use if you hurt them that much.
Sanctions have a way to go. Shell are still shipping Russian LNG because "honouring contracts". I'm sure they aren't alone. Those profiteering SOBs need to be told they're allowed to drop Russian product like hot cakes. Sanctions need to be made transitive, so that nations which ignore them get sanctioned too. Dirty money should be seized (and sent to Ukraine). There are so many ways sanctions can be extended, all the way to full, active blockade. Each has a cost, for sure, but the cost of leaving Ukraine to wither once their heroes have defeated the invaders would be similar to not having helped out in the first place.

I'm sure diplomatic efforts are under way to persuade those putative "friends" that it's actually in their better interests to remain on good terms with the West, and incidentally help maintain the rules-based world order from which they have benefitted from since about 1945. If Russia survives being kicked out of Ukraine in any form which retains the will and means to cause Ukraine grief in a material (rather than simply political) sense, that tooth is, to torture your metaphor some, rotted below the gum line, out of reach of the pliers, and no one wants to go in with the drill because the patient has a knife to the dentist's belly that they will definitely use if you hurt them that much.
Sanctions have a way to go. Shell are still shipping Russian LNG because "honouring contracts". I'm sure they aren't alone. Those profiteering SOBs need to be told they're allowed to drop Russian product like hot cakes. Sanctions need to be made transitive, so that nations which ignore them get sanctioned too. Dirty money should be seized (and sent to Ukraine). There are so many ways sanctions can be extended, all the way to full, active blockade. Each has a cost, for sure, but the cost of leaving Ukraine to wither once their heroes have defeated the invaders would be similar to not having helped out in the first place.

Not just history: current events and the future prospects for lasting peace... Naivete perhaps, or something more... directed? Or just a narcissistic unwillingness to accept that their world view is pretty divorced from reality.

Depends how high the wire is, and how bright the searchlights and how alert the guards... Only 80% joking.

Depends how high the wire is, and how bright the searchlights and how alert the guards... Only 80% joking.

An example covered by "...more directed", for me. Malice of a hostile state actor directing (via subtle or not-so-subtle means) a mouthpiece.
Incompetence though, that's another possible reason for people to espouse such unrealistic aspirations, and an even better reason to ignore that author...

Not just history: current events and the future prospects for lasting peace... Naivete perhaps, or something more... directed? Or just a narcissistic unwillingness to accept that their world view is pretty divorced from reality.

WeGo or NoGo...
One of the primary USPs for me is the 1 minute turn and infinite replays of the turn results. If it doesn't have that, it's not a competitor to CM, in my lexicon.

While I'm sure most of the folk here would, in isolation, agree that UKR firing SS and ATACMS at "legit military and logistical targets" inside Russia-proper should be allowed, it might be too-swift a temperature jump for that frog we're trying to boil without it feeling like it needs to leap out of the pot.
What I'd do is set up a lot of target solutions for inside-Russia nodes, and hit them all with as many launchers simultaneously as could be brought into range, just once right at the point of smashing through Russian lines in Ukraine. "Oops, sorry. Won't do it again."  But the damage will be done, the disruption maximised, and we can all live with the bluster that will dribble out of the Kremlin. Lots of preconditions to set, like better missile defense across UKR (there would definitely be a Kindjahl tantrum) and alternative arrangements for any HIMARS targets that would be left un-serviced by the alteration in engagement range for those systems...

While I'm sure most of the folk here would, in isolation, agree that UKR firing SS and ATACMS at "legit military and logistical targets" inside Russia-proper should be allowed, it might be too-swift a temperature jump for that frog we're trying to boil without it feeling like it needs to leap out of the pot.
What I'd do is set up a lot of target solutions for inside-Russia nodes, and hit them all with as many launchers simultaneously as could be brought into range, just once right at the point of smashing through Russian lines in Ukraine. "Oops, sorry. Won't do it again."  But the damage will be done, the disruption maximised, and we can all live with the bluster that will dribble out of the Kremlin. Lots of preconditions to set, like better missile defense across UKR (there would definitely be a Kindjahl tantrum) and alternative arrangements for any HIMARS targets that would be left un-serviced by the alteration in engagement range for those systems...

While I'm sure most of the folk here would, in isolation, agree that UKR firing SS and ATACMS at "legit military and logistical targets" inside Russia-proper should be allowed, it might be too-swift a temperature jump for that frog we're trying to boil without it feeling like it needs to leap out of the pot.
What I'd do is set up a lot of target solutions for inside-Russia nodes, and hit them all with as many launchers simultaneously as could be brought into range, just once right at the point of smashing through Russian lines in Ukraine. "Oops, sorry. Won't do it again."  But the damage will be done, the disruption maximised, and we can all live with the bluster that will dribble out of the Kremlin. Lots of preconditions to set, like better missile defense across UKR (there would definitely be a Kindjahl tantrum) and alternative arrangements for any HIMARS targets that would be left un-serviced by the alteration in engagement range for those systems...

Agreed lets not. To be clear the FSB is an organization that actually exists. It has leaders and followers. They have goals. They so stuff. They act together. While the "deep state" does not actually exist. It doesn't matter if some people think it does, it doesn't matter if the authors of the linked article don't understand that. There is no organization that calls itself the deep state, there is no leadership, there is no goal, it's a fake thing that people who are upset about not getting their way invoke to justify that their incompetence, illegal acts or general misunderstandings of how the world works.
They are not the same. There is no similarity. So there is no issue with semantics because it is clear.

There isn't different code for the AI. What you're seeing is your very own confirmation bias off a small sample. Until you can provide data rather than anecdote, it's not even worth considering the possibility.
So set up some fire missions and do some stats on a few hundred teams, and maybe someone will buy what you're selling. Publish the scenario so other people can validate your results. It's how science works, ya know?

It's not just The_Capt that wants it. It's Ukraine, too. Who do you think would be the preferred target of fractious warlords (other than each other) with nukes? Who's right next to said warlords if they start lobbing nukes at each other?
That is, if you assume there's an actual threat of thermonuclear explosion. Once central authority has collapsed, who's going to be able to actually maintain these things in working order, and bypass the failsafes that certainly exist to stop random custodians of Armageddon from getting frisky already? Assuming that Putin doesn't press the Big Red Button (or perhaps that him attempting to press it is what gets him a Makarov Ear Wax Removal (9mm or .380).
Perhaps the bigger worry for Ukraine is a spiteful Putin (or whomever) giving the launch order as a desperate attempt to "win" the "SMO". Whether it's a Tac Nuke or something bigger, that's a city, probably Kyiv. Maybe several; depends on how spiteful the launch-order-giver is feeling, how many fail to launch, how many get intercepted and how many fizzle. Whether the risk/result numbers make it "better" to have a rapid win with the risk of nukes or a slow frog-boil where nukes aren't a consideration is something that's very hard to know, and we certainly should be grateful we don't have to personally enumerate that dreadful calculus.
Obviously, to a rational view, nuking anywhere isn't going to get Putin a win, but we keep having to remind ourselves that our definition of rational doesn't necessarily apply to the criminal insane asylum that is the Kremlin.

It's not just The_Capt that wants it. It's Ukraine, too. Who do you think would be the preferred target of fractious warlords (other than each other) with nukes? Who's right next to said warlords if they start lobbing nukes at each other?
That is, if you assume there's an actual threat of thermonuclear explosion. Once central authority has collapsed, who's going to be able to actually maintain these things in working order, and bypass the failsafes that certainly exist to stop random custodians of Armageddon from getting frisky already? Assuming that Putin doesn't press the Big Red Button (or perhaps that him attempting to press it is what gets him a Makarov Ear Wax Removal (9mm or .380).
Perhaps the bigger worry for Ukraine is a spiteful Putin (or whomever) giving the launch order as a desperate attempt to "win" the "SMO". Whether it's a Tac Nuke or something bigger, that's a city, probably Kyiv. Maybe several; depends on how spiteful the launch-order-giver is feeling, how many fail to launch, how many get intercepted and how many fizzle. Whether the risk/result numbers make it "better" to have a rapid win with the risk of nukes or a slow frog-boil where nukes aren't a consideration is something that's very hard to know, and we certainly should be grateful we don't have to personally enumerate that dreadful calculus.
Obviously, to a rational view, nuking anywhere isn't going to get Putin a win, but we keep having to remind ourselves that our definition of rational doesn't necessarily apply to the criminal insane asylum that is the Kremlin.