beardiebloke

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holy moly, huge body count from UKR strike on a RU training site.  ~100 bodies.  Plus bradley pounding MTLB & russian armor getting mauled, always a pick-me-up.  Plus some further tragedy for UKR people in the form of lost young heroes & other stuff.  
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/1/2238296/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-ATACMS-destroys-Russian-training-site?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
 

Saw this and thought it was pretty wild.  Drone fitted with a really long spool of fiber optic cable to avoid EW.  Obvious practical issues but if the distance is not so great it should work.
https://www.threads.net/@maks_23_ua/post/C4N23bHKkBN

We all know what this...and don't try to deny it.  This is Sweden's inevitable march to global furniture dominance.  NATO spending will be siphoned to a blooming Swedish military office furniture line and reinforce the home market.  As we fight for the Global South, it is all just a cover for selling more "Bekväm" chairs.  It all ends with Sweden ruling our bums - or at least where we put them - like emperors
By 2125 the entire world will be living on Swedish smart furniture on three different planets.  

There's also two what looks like Tu-95 to my untrained eye, plus two other four-engine planes (Il-76?)
Taganrog is what, barely 100 miles from the front?
This seems sus to me. Would love it to be yet another "not even russians are that stupid" situation but 2 strategic bombers and AWACS parked right next to each other, seems too good to be true.

Hmmm
 

Well done, Denmark!

Honestly, I don't know if I would call it "anxiety" but I have had nights where for hours I have been awake thinking about this war.
I understand how important this war is for the direction this world can go, and I will keep following it until it is finished and will keep supporting the good guys in this war no matter how long it takes.
Personally I do recommend once in a while disconnecting from the internet and spending some time with family, go on a hike in the woods or something.
But ultimately compared to Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, I really have nothing to be anxious about.
 

All complaints about pathing in the game will be refrred to this video forevermore.

I'm not sure about Meteor, since that is pretty much state of the art, but Ukraine should already have piles of AMRAAM because they are used in NASAMS - the whole point of NASAMS is "let's build ground based air defense system that uses NATO air-to-air missiles to simplify the supply chain", and that is why it was given to Ukraine as well, since NATO was literally running out of surface to air missiles.
Ukraine could mount some of the on F-16 for sure.
But I feel Patriot is better for "sniping" airplanes because it doesn't really lock things until the last possible moment (according to this explanatory video anyway) so it's like "all is fine, all is fine, oh no, boom" (this is very technical description, I know).
 
Ukraine also promised that if Russia tries hitting energy infrastructure again, they will retaliate by attacking oil and gas, which is the only way how Russia stays afloat financially. Now normally I would say Russians are too dumb to be convinced by something like this, but it is possible it worked.
If they are just stockpiling for a one or two big strikes so they can say "we can do this whole winter, surrender" that would of course backfire hilariously if as a response half their refineries will go boom.

Dumb question of the day: does the RU loss of 5 jets indicate some use of F16s?  If it is possible, in what way would F16s be able to do this?  I thought they wuz just airplanes that would be shot out of the sky if they actually tried to accomplish anything useful.  But then again, I have a well known tank bias.  

Yeah their potwine is really cool thing. For a V-Day (or khuilo death) I keep a bottle of Commandaria from Cyprus. The best of sweet wines that I'v ever taste )  

No matter how ****ty the situation is in my country. I still believe in you guys. I believe that GOOD WILL STILL VICTORY EVIL. (even if the Russians capture my country 😔)

Because missiles and fighter aircraft are really cool, especially when used for a righteous cause. 

https://mil.in.ua/uk/news/povernys-zhyvym-peredav-pershi-spetsialni-prytsily-dlya-mk-19/
The design department of the "come back alive" foundation has developed an artillery-type sight for the mk 19 grenade launcher. This sight allows indirect fire from this grenade launcher. The fund managed to collect 13 million UAH, which will provide 150 grenade launcher crews. Previously, the Ukrainian military complained that the mk19 does not have sights for indirect fire, unlike the AGS-17. The capabilities of this support weapon will now be expanded

Apologies if this has already been linked but if your life is not complete without a report from RUSI on UGS's, then it is now
Uncrewed Ground Systems: Organisational and Tactical Realities for Integration | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org)
and the pdf is here:
Uncrewed Ground Systems: Organisational and Tactical Realities for Integration (rusi.org)
Chapters:
What are UGS? What are the purported benefits of UGS? What are the potential uses of UGS? Considerations for UGS support to light manoeuvre forces How do UGS get to, and stay in, the fight? How to make sure soldiers use them I know this OT but we have occasionally touched on UGS on this thread so just thought I'd link it.

I was going for a more mocking angle to be honest.  Since the dawn of time people - usually old people - have somehow hooked whatever social ills they see onto a crisis.  “Moral decline”, “Hippies”, “Homosexuality”, “Women who can vote”!
Human social systems are naturally a mix of progressiveness and conservatism.  And rarely, if ever, does a war start based solely on whatever social issue means most to you.  We did not start wars because “the church” since the Crusades, possibly the Middle Ages - and even then there was a whole lotta money and power at play.  We sure as hell have never started a war over any of the rest of “damn kids these days” stuff.
The West is not going to fall over the obsolescence of religion or LGBTQ issues, or whatever you are worried about.  Why?  Because it didn’t last time with “women voting”, “civil rights” and “rock and/or roll”.  In fact since those End Times, the West has continued it rise in power and wealth.  
If anything does destroy the West it will be power hungry egomaniacs that leverage all that social angst into something really dangerous.  They aren’t doing it because they really care about our church/mosque/raccoon ratios - they are doing it to take more power.  The dismantling of democracy, social divisions that turn cancerous, deep corruption and greed- this is how empires die.  Not because we decide to stop going to freakin church and start this strange new thing called “meditation”.  

Baltic sea, such a rough place for undersea infrastructure... another telecom link damaged, this time between Estonia and Sweden.
https://www.dn.se/sverige/forsvarsministern-haller-presstraff-om-kritisk-infrastruktur-i-havet/
Must be earthquakes. Or Jaws.

First thought: He could in theory have evaded it long enough for the battery to run out.
Second thought: He cold have shot it down if he had a rifle or a pistol.
Third thought: Why didn't he have one?
 

It is a better read by the light of burning Russian helicopters.

Further confirmation (not really needed):
 

The issue is the next layer of deep strike that the Ukrainians have not been permitted to do. If the Kerch bridge was in the water, and the weakest links in the rail system in the parts of Russia immediately surrounding Ukraine were under relentless missile attack this thing would be in a completely different place. Jake Sullivan has decide he would rather the Ukrainians lose than that take that risk. Given his brilliant piece about the state of the Mideast last week, i think he needs to go.

Battalion.  Not Brigade.  Of course the loss of an entire Battalion is going to seriously impact its parent formation.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20054483
 
By early information, likely an attack on Estonia-Finland gas pipeline yesterday. 
 

Mainly problem for Estonia. Finlands and Estonia's shared LNG-terminal is situated in Finland and this pipe is used for transfers to Estonia. 

Oh my someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  I was more playfully talking about the pearl clutching and hand wringing "the half empty glass is breaking!!" sentiment, which appears to be spreading.  Long list of posts with that tone have your name at the top going way back, hence why I "pulled you in"...and you never disappoint!
So we have moved from the monolithic invincible Russia specter, to "how long can Ukraine possibly hold out?!"
As long as they want/need/have/can?  I sense you, and many others, are really struggling with the unknowns in all this.  Welcome to war.  It is a collision of certainties that create massive uncertainty.  The RA is a "shattered shell" of what we feared on 21 Feb 23 - you can debate that one all day but it is done.  It will take a decade or more to rebuild what they were shooting for back in the 10s.  They broke it all over Ukraine last year; talk about bad decisions.  But they can Defend - as the old Prussian also said, that part is easier, but it does not get the business done.
So how long can Ukraine "last" really depends on what they are doing.  Can they freeze this conflict in place - yeuup, the RA suicide-fest last winter proved that one.  Can they re-take all of former Ukraine...well, jury is still out.  Can, as a nation, they sustain a war longer than Russia?  Well we will see.  Are we talking low-intensity "we are all dug in and raiding now and again"?  Sure.  Are we talking insanely high intensity combat - well probably not, no one really can.
My main point is that just because you can't get answers you want does not automatically mean the worst is happening.  Based on what I can see (not imagine I am seeing, like fully functioning Russian rail systems pouring thousands of tons of supplies onto fat happy Russian defenders), the West is committed through the Winter at least.  If Ukraine can pull off a breakthrough and regain some momentum, they have a good chance at some serious gains- as we have seen in this war, no one cracks like the RA.
If no breakthroughs happen and all we get is very expensive leg humping, then I expect some difficult political conversations are on the table late-Winter, early-Spring.  Maybe we call it where it stands and everyone wins/loses.  Putin can claim the "greatest Russian victory since Bagration" as he retains an extra 6% of now-blasted and mined wasteland, that cost them 100k lives.  Russia can go back and lick its wounds while trying to figure out who to fend off NATO, who scored Finland and Sweden out of this deal - Russia got a pretty weak China...and the big stuffy animal filled with asbestos that is Iran.  Oh and lets not forget the BFF of North Korea - like being best friends with that weird kid who tortures bugs at recess while touching himself, and everyone tries not to notice.
Ukraine gets to stay Ukraine, starts laying mines - hey look they can do it too! And we wind up with a Korean solution.  Maybe Ukraine does not even get to enter into NATO or EU, but money and alliances will be created because containing Russia matters now - South Korea made it work pretty well and their capital is under gun range of one of the craziest MFs since his Dad.       
https://datacommons.org/place/country/KOR/?utm_medium=explore&mprop=amount&popt=EconomicActivity&cpv=activitySource,GrossDomesticProduction&hl=en
To my mind, that is about as bad it will get, at least as things stand right now.  If the West - especially Europe, cuts Ukraine lose entirely, then this whole show was a complete waste of time as Ukraine will not be able to survive for long without a massive reconstruction/investment effort - we let that happen, well we deserve what happens next. 
I know this is not the war you ordered, sir, but it is the one we got.