poesel

Urrrgh, please ignore this guy. He is fishing for votes in the brown lakes. I can't think of a German politician I feel more contempt for as this guy.
He's MP of Saxony - the Florida of Germany, but without the sunshine.

Ah, that's because you are mixing up two different things. I said the Bundeswehr (possibly) can't afford it, not Germany. If the Polish army can part with a major part of their tank fleet then probably whatever agency is responsible for acquiring their materiel is not as staggeringly incompetent and/or corrupt as ours.
See, if the Bundeswehr was well run but too small, I'd say we just don't pump enough money in there. If on the other hand a large fraction of vehicles, planes, helicopters, ships, etc. is not in any usable state... If an agency of 8500 people is unable to equip a unit that is actually going to go into a conflict zone (a few 1000 soldiers), if this unit has to borrow personal security stuff from other units or just buy it privately, if our elite swimmers don't even have a f****** pool to train in, giving them twice as much money won't solve the problem.
We can discuss if that makes sense in the bigger picture but I understand every commanding officer for not wanting to part with the equipment that happens to be ready to use. 🤷‍♂️

Reasonably long steady shots, give a good sense of the Bahmut battlescape (1 minute only, 2nd minute is blank screen)
https://samf.substack.com/p/makiiva-and-bakhmut-the-impact-of
There are not many places that can accommodate large numbers of troops with some provision for food, sleep, and hygiene, so it is not surprising that they end up in public buildings such as schools. 
P.S. Clever. 
 

I think that's the hope of basically everyone living west of the Dnepr, so welcome to the club!
But I doubt it will happen till Ukraine and Russia can negotiate a peace between themselves, one that actually sticks and with none of that occasional shelling across the border nonsense. The current members of NATO are very unlikely to accept a prospect that is currently engaged in a hot, or even lukewarm, war. Even then it'll be years, maybe a decade+, before Ukraine gets their membership certificate and special decoder ring. For example, the Baltic States didn't get in till something like 14 years after they all held hands and sang a few songs. And that was with only a few grumpy words from Moscow in the interim, not active hostilities.

Well thank you so much for tolerating us.
In fact, you ask 'simple' questions but don't really seem to give a rats about listening to answers or accepting feedback.  Every response is just to give yourself a springboard to post yet another wall of text, making very bold but highly debatable assertions.
...Plus, at last count, you've managed to ad hom about a dozen of us here already.
So let me ad hom you right back, you're coming across right now as a superbly intelligent, well read 18 year old. One of many who have graced this fine Forum over the years. (I have a 16 year old at home here).
...And while I think it's fine you are stirring the pot and challenging us, I predict a rage quit soon when we crusty groupthinkers fail to bow down before your high energy debating style.
TL:DR you are really going to need to give and take a little here, or this will get tiresome.
But of course, as Steve properly reminds me, it's his living room, he sets the rules for decorum. My views are my own alone.

presumably because in western democracies our generals don't get to make those decisions?

Hey Khalerick, welcome to the thread, and it's always good to have a team B / devil's advocate view here.... I and others have played that role on occasion over the last 2000 pages.
But you have now left us about a dozen wordy posts over the last 2 pages in which you have laid out some *extremely* confident statements as to facts, only some of which may in fact be true.   A bit of a Gish Gallop debating strategy.
....And now you seem to be saying 'take it or leave it' on your thesis.  
I'm not tone policing -- we have some *very* cranky regular posters here, some of them in the emerging Western democracy that is fighting for its life. But nobody is going to make it their business to parse and debate each one of your assertions. Especially if your response to being challenged is simply to double down and say 'I thought I made myself clear.'
And then seem to suggest that the people posting on this thread are more preoccupied with confirmation bias via Tweet or giggling over war porn than understanding the ramifications of the struggle.
Because if that's really your impression of this community, you might want to take your opinions elsewhere.

Diplomacy is for civilised countries following international laws and conventions, not terrorist states. Putin himself has also said that he does not feel obliged to anything discussed with the west and will do what he wants. Thats not someone you have a discussion with.
This "gun" to his head is his own, forged in 20 years of dictatorship and revisionism. Nobody in the west cared about Russia, the cold war was belived to be over. Well, it turns out Putins grande opus is not about improving his country but turning its sons into fertiliser so can look at his imperialist ambitions on a map and go thats mine now!
What do you think will happen if he says, we won! The jewish nazi is no more, lets go home. Do you think the cattle that was actionless while  being herded into the slaughter would rise up? Because he didnt kill every last one Ukrainian? They will care more about having McDonalds return to their ****ty village. He can return to being King of the **** hill.
Who doesnt have an out is Ukraine and its not because the evil west is puppeteering it, its because Russians tend to leave mass graves and unburied bodies litering the streets.
The West has collectively I think 60 times the economic power of Russia, Ukraine will fight to the last and what do the Russians have? Another unwinable Afghanistan at best, one that even by conservative estimates they already trippled in death count. Do you think Russia could ever rule this land? 

Do we have any idea how many AFVs/IFVs/APCs are non-serviceable due to wear out?  I mean the numbers are not adding up here -


So if Oryx’s math is right the UA should have had about 2-3000 AFVs at the beginning of the war.  They have lost about 250 so heading towards 10%.  We know there have been donations and sales, but the total of the effective fleet has not been disclosed.

This graphic says that the UA is trending towards even overall on AFVs, however, this won’t help new units that are going short.  Neither will western equipment in the short term either.  
And we have all sorts of anecdotes from online chatter.  What is the reality?  If the existing UA fleet is failing from wear and tear than we should prioritize parts and maintenance to keep the fleet fighting.  The UA has lost over 500 logistical vehicles, twice the number of AFVs are they a higher priority?  The West can only send so much down a pipe that is also limited, and Ukraine can only absorb so much.
So equipping the rest of those 6 Bdes, do we focus on more Soviet-model equipment?  Logistics and sustainment of the current fleet to keep it on the road?  Or a bunch of western equipment that is going to take months to integrate?  Or do we focus on munitions?
I know the reflex answer is “everything!” But that is not how this works.  I am not saying “the UA is fine, no need to send anything” we know that is simply not true.  My point is that we need to focus on those things the UA needs to win, that it can use and sustain right away. To my eyes AFVs are lower on the list than ranged fires and ammunition. Not everything can be priority #1.  I have no doubt we will work in a western fleet into all this eventually.

Next Ramstein meeting is on the 20th. New minister will be appointed on the 16th. Should be more than enough time to get to the same level as the previous minister.
Or Strack-Zimmermann and depose of Wissing to get the balance right again. Win-Win 

Next Ramstein meeting is on the 20th. New minister will be appointed on the 16th. Should be more than enough time to get to the same level as the previous minister.
Or Strack-Zimmermann and depose of Wissing to get the balance right again. Win-Win 

Next Ramstein meeting is on the 20th. New minister will be appointed on the 16th. Should be more than enough time to get to the same level as the previous minister.
Or Strack-Zimmermann and depose of Wissing to get the balance right again. Win-Win 

Finally - just read an article today which described her kind of leadership 'palliative'...
Official announcement likely on Monday. Let's see if she will just be replaced or if they will shuffle some ministers around.

Everyone is entitled to a little rant every now and then. 😉 A few things you might consider, though.
Scholz was elected for precisely the things you accuse him of. His whole election campaign was built on him being Merkel 2.0, just more... unobtrusive. During the pandemic Merkel had shown a little too much... presence. And his opponent, Armin Laschet, was not much different only with different party colors. In summary, we didn't want a great leader. We voted for someone who doesn't bother us with politics but lets us sleep on. Just like the 16 years before.
And I doubt Merkel would have acted much differently. She didn't even go to the toilet without studying the latest poll on digestion before. 50% against giving Leos puts it too mildly: Only 38% are actually in favour. Now, that may not sit very well with anyone here but ironically this is the whole point of the West supporting Ukraine in this war. Having to accept that a majority of people has a different opinion than I have is what's democracy is about and isn't this all about defending western values?
Lastly, from what you write I'm not sure you actually want Scholz (or anyone else for that matter) to really be a great leader. A great leader would not look at polls or political pressure but instead go by what he believes in. Now I have no clue what that would actually be in Scholz' case but it might not be what you want. To me it looks like, and no offense intended, you don't want a leader but a figurehead for your ideas. Nothing wrong with that but it's a different thing.

I wander why, but while Switchblades clips are very rare and indeed no more than hand granades, Lancets seem like true bane of Ukrainian equipment in this war- they hunt for S300, howitzers, reportedly even a gunboat. Certainly nets can do the job well, but they are not always available. Also many videos show Lancets hitting howitzers from behind, they probably spot some weak points there. And this is despite the fact they are slow, not very accurate and need another guiding drone. They are clearly a problem.
As far as I know, not. But it has a cult status and is very popular among teenagers also here, and it somewhat shapes their vision of the war. They even have Anime made on that popularity of armour topics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu9EYHjohp0
(You never saw me posting this, if somebody ask. Yes, culture is irreversibly broken and we are heading toward our doom of progressing infantilisation...)

Failed successfully.
I grow tired, however... the meat of your first link:
contains in its second paragraph a claim regarding information collection bandwidth in monkeys, which is not present in the link it provides, and means nothing on the face of it, since my 802.11 is only 40Hz or so and I can fit the entirety of the internet down it.  Indeed the reference itself says:
Which is a little more interesting and nuanced.  In any case, the claim, together with the second paragraph (are we biologically incapable of denying $50 now instead of $100 in a month?  How is it determined that $100 in a month is better for the subjects, since biology seems to deny such a possibility, indeed how can the researchers even write the paragraph without the pen falling from their hand in a rush to the cash machine), mean precisely nothing when it comes to the conjecture 'humans are biologically tailored towards short term thinking' - even if they are right they are wrong. 
Human biology is good for running for a long time, throwing things at stuff, manipulating small objects, and being programmable with culture.
~Edited: Co-ordination problems are not biological problems, they are born in part from our models of the world and the technology at hand, including those of communication and economic systems. Edited~
It is a forte that we possess alone in the known universe.
To get to my general point on the subject - whether or not we are anecdotally prone to a behaviour in one situation or another is beside the point.  Human beings create explanatory knowledge which they can then use to change their behaviour.  We extend our mental machinery with things like pencils and keyboards, hard drives and paper.  We can conjecture things, and hold them to logic, by which they proceed, not by biological rules, but by their own attributes, to imagined consequences.  Whatever biological cages and predispositions we have, it seems to me we are ultimately free to escape them, to the extent that we are able to tie our behaviour to ideas about reality, and those aren't made out of neurons.
I shall not appraise your other links, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence": I apply a similar axiom when Google searches are used in place of arguments, placing the burden of disproof on the receiver of wisdom.
-Totalitarian and Authoritarian Government-
Government that brooks no alternative and no opposition is not necessarily bad at planning for the future, I disagree with you on that.  They can be more consistent, and with the knowledge that they are secure, plan far into the future.
In the case of Russia, 'ruining the economy' is somewhat subjective if you believe all your mates deserve a bunch of money and everyone else can eat a rock, or that might makes right, or that you are the real inheritors of Greek tradition because Catherine the Great captured Crimea...
The strength of the modern democracies is in good part to do with error-correction, and placing the levers for that in the hands of those they affect.  They are open to ideas which can change them fundamentally, ideas like human rights, property rights, etc. etc.  Their specific incarnations can be better or worse of course, the best of them can be updated without too much trouble...
Unlike CM

I keep coming back to the logistical and training headaches the huge assortment of donated and captured equipment in the Ukrainian forces must be causing too. I really am at a loss to think of a good historical parallel... honestly, the Rebel Alliance in the timeframe between the battles of Yavin and Endor (or Scarif and Jakku if we want to cast a slightly wider net and include the new continuity) almost feels like a better comparison than anything in real life.

Maybe he knew my relatives in the resistance then. They are not here to offer their opinions either, so I think we should let them rest in peace.
In general, this discussion is branching out way more than I can respond to. We could argue back and forth just about the Danish demining topic for a long time. Or the finer points about collective versus individual guilt, and how that differs from holding an entire nation accountable for paying reparations.
So I'd like to repeat the point I was originally trying to make and that I still stand by:
That I don't think it's true, reasonable, fair or even useful to declare that every single Russian soldier deserves a painful death. I think this is a kind of extremist thinking that leads nowhere good.
Of course I agree that Ukraine has every moral right to defend itself. Including by killing any number of Russian soldiers - conscripted or not - as long as this war is going on.
That right does not imply that all Russian soldiers must necessarily be evil though.

Complex question. I‘ve read once that Germany (as of 1870) has always experienced war as an act of aggression against her neighbours. But never in defense. 
There is no experience with war as a good thing (in this context). Weapons are the means for a war. No weapons, no war.
We are lacking an example for a war in history where we successfully defended ourselves or freed us from occupation. That is different from nearly all other European nations.

Probably yes
probably no (except for some warm words)
yes
yes, but that is not a large business
no - there is not much Russia can offer if you discount gas & oil
yes
I repeat myself as often as necessary: Scholz is not in favor of delivering weapons, because his party and the voters for his party are not in favor of it. This is pretty simple.
Since he is the chancellor, and he also needs to win elections, Germany will never ever be the first to deliver anything 'heavy'.  He will, however, deliver if EU and NATO partners will. Because it would be bad form not to join ranks. That trumps any hesitation there is.
Finland/Poland/Spain/Netherlands: get a common statement out to deliver x Leo2s and Germany will follow. It is necessary for Scholz to be dragged into this decision. He cannot be seen as active in this matter. He must be reluctant for political reasons.

It is widely believed that the pre-war Russian army was an army of professionals. The testimonies of prisoners at the beginning of the war directly contradict this. All as one declare that instead of combat training they were engaged in complete nonsense and eyewash and held weapons at best several times in their entire service. Many generally state that their position in peacetime was completely different than during the war. Their commanders knew perfectly well that with such meager training they would be equally ineffective in both the old and the new position. 
Everyone remembers very well that at the beginning of the war, the clothes and ammunition of the soldiers were of terrible quality, many types of equipment were missing, as they were stolen. The equipment was in poor technical condition and was constantly out of order.
And vice versa, after 8 years of war in the Donbas, the DPR/LPR fighters were much better prepared and equipped than their Russian counterparts. Civilian volunteers supplied them with everything they needed, they made extensive use of quadcopters.
After half a year of the war, the Russians deployed several plants for commissioning equipment after conservation, and their equipment has since been in good condition. They also learned how to use quadrocopters. Many soldiers and officers received combat experience. Contrary to our expectations, Putin did not throw all the conscripts into battle at once. Instead, they were trained on the territory of Russia and Belarus for 4 months. And today they were transferred to the Donbass. I am ABSOLUTELY sure that this training is much better than what the Russian "professionals" had before the war. I'm sure they were able to find soldiers with combat experience to teach their mobilized something.
Do you seriously think that the Russians will not be able to provide their mobilized soldiers with equipment? Any equipment can be easily bought in a variety of online stores. Our volunteers provide the Ukrainian army with everything necessary in this way. So why can't the Russians buy all of this?
I am sure that the Russian army today is much more combat-ready than it was before the war.
There will be a time of hard and exhausting battles ahead.

That was after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and before the creation of the Kaiserreich in 1871. That was a phase where technically there was no Germany. Also, a bit too far in the past and more of a Prussian thing.

That was after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and before the creation of the Kaiserreich in 1871. That was a phase where technically there was no Germany. Also, a bit too far in the past and more of a Prussian thing.

Not more is known than this interview. The further delivery of tanks (no type mentioned) has not been ruled out. That came from the vice-chancellor and Green party member, Habeck. The Greens have always been pro-weapon delivery. So not much news here.
But 'seriously preparing' mentioned together with 'weapons delivery'? That would be a first...
 

That was after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and before the creation of the Kaiserreich in 1871. That was a phase where technically there was no Germany. Also, a bit too far in the past and more of a Prussian thing.