Lethaface
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Posts
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Posts posted by Lethaface
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2 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:
The big question I have is what happened to all the Abrams and 155mm long-range Arty from when the Commandant restructured the USMC. Were they transferred to the Army in case Canada or Mexico attack us, or Russia arracks U.S. across the Bering Straites? Why can’t those weapons be sent to Ukraine?
Because Scholz won't send Taurus ;-).
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3 hours ago, TheVulture said:
Ukraine seem to be getting very good at this "asymmetrical conventional war" approach.
The Black Sea Fleet, which vastly overmatched the Ukrainian navy, has been pretty much neutralised. In the early says they were launching cruise missile strikes from near Odessa. Now they won't even go as far as Sevastopol, and operationally seem to be limited to ferrying supplies with their decreasing supply of landing ships.
The Russian air force also has massive superiority in numbers and modern equipment, and yet are losing aircraft at an impressive rate and have lost two of their A-50 planes (and no-one seems to know really how many airworthy ones they actually have now). Of course the air force is still a problem and not neutralised (hello, glide bombs and cruise missile salvos), but it's obvious that Ukraine are forcing the Russians to be more cautious and conservative with their air power than they'd ideally like.
While the naval successes where/are impressive and had tangible strategic affects (grain corridor for one), those were imo not directly influencing the military operational reality. For that Ukraine would have to sink at least as much ships as they have done until now. Russia can (afaik) still launch cruise missiles and ferry supplies, just less then before.
The recent successes against the RU Air force are, however, going to have direct impact on the operational reality / military equilibrium if Ukraine can sustain these numbers. Because Russia, like others said, can't sustain these losses.
And to my eyes at least it looks like these are not incidents anymore. Russia can't lose another couple of A-50s in a couple of weeks.
Also, seriously degrading Russia's airborne early warning capability over Ukraine could have many implications, making life for Russian planes even harder then it already is. One can imagine planes dropping glidebombs getting ambushed by Ukr fighters, etc.
So, strategically the recent 'air show' is imo the most promising development with potential large strategic implications we have seen since, quite a while?Now add a few dozen f-16s in the mix and things might get even more interesting. Bye glidebombs, hi JDAMs. What might Ukraine be able to enable using those? I expect/guess/hope more then Ru can do with meat attacks supported by glidebomb artillery.
Anyway it's a bit too early to start a chant yet, but it's sure is looking promising imo!
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11 hours ago, The_Capt said:
The next question is “can they do it, light?” Can they upscale Krynki but not run afoul of the dangers of mass in this war? This we do not know. Light has done some pretty amazing stuff in this war, but mostly on the defence. We saw hints at Kharkiv as Light forces broke out, not heavy. But I am still not sure if light infantry, precision fires and unmanned can actually pull off a series of sustained raids that create (as opposed to enable) operational effects leading to decisions. All I can say is that if I wanted to try out that theory, I would pick the Kherson sector.
My three points are 1) the value of the terrain is that it would put operational (and possibly) strategic pressure on Russia in an area of vulnerability. 2) The terrain favours a light force approach due to logistical and ISR realities, and 3) It expands Ukrainian strategic options, as opposed to locking them into a grinding war of attrition.
But as you say, we will have to wait and see.
Didn't they already do it, light? Kherson already has operational implications, as glide bombs and forces (etc) Russia deploys to that area can't be deployed somewhere else.
Imo it's already a good opportunity for attriting Russia's capabilities in a favorable way. Sure the scale might not be same as other fronts, but every little bit helps. The risks are also not that high for Ukraine, sometimes one has to make a play with pawns / some pieces in one place, in order to force the opponent to react to it and enable other pieces/operations to come into play.
And indeed who knows what kind of options might come forth from it, surely Russia can't neglect it unless they want to test whether unopposed light might create an instance of deep infiltration and exploitation in the rear; this time without the traditional heavy mass breakthrough preceding it.Not putting pressure on Kherson front would certainly be favorable for Russia, imo.
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13 hours ago, Rokko said:
I think we are not talking about invoking Article 5 over some RAF specialists getting targeted in Western Ukraine in a missile strike but rather about Russia launching Kalibrs at London "decision making centers" in retaliation for UK involvement in providing target data for Storm Shadows. I don't know what people like Scholz would otherwise mean (and be fearful of) by "direct involvement" in the war.
Lol why is Germany always such a strange topic on here. Scholz says that Germany doesn't want to get directly involved in the war, he didn't say that he fears direct retaliation by Russia as a reason for not getting directly involved. He just said that they don't want to get directly involved as a policy. Now whether one agrees with the policy, or whether one does agree assisting Ukrainians with Taurus is actually being directly involved in the war isn't a relevant subject for speculation about Germanies involvement in article 5. Article 5 is in a whole other
ballparkuniverse.
Now one can also speculate about article 5, but going there based of the supposed background reason for a policy not wanting to get directly involved in the war (given that one believes sending Tauris would be doing so), is rather farfetched to say it diplomatically. It is an attribution error based of speculative judgments, about what the reason might be for a certain policy and whether that policy might come from a tendency inside Germany to not uphold to their treaties. They certainly DON'T have treaty which obliges them to send cruise missiles to Ukraine and assist Ukraine with firing them, neither does UK and FRA seeming to do so has any relevancy to Germanies interpretation of stuff and their sovereignty position (also neglecting any potential technical differences between Taurus / Stormshadow which might have impact; do I think that is the case? no but I don't have information to confirm/deny that premise).Now to keep things much more simple, which I prefer and usually is good practice: it could just be that Germany / Scholz is less 'flexible' when it comes to interpreting whether assisting Ukraine firing Taurus is being 'directly involved in the war'.
UK and France might just 'bend the rules' in their mind and establish the position they are 'not' directly involved in the war even if they assist Ukraine firing their missiles, while Germany might feel it is if doing the same thing.
UK/Fra might reason that there is little difference between supporting Ukraine to use weapon system A or B, while Germany might reason there is a big difference.In fact such differences are not surprising at all, if one has some experience within EU/countries in question.
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20 minutes ago, dontpanic! said:
Hi Dave,
I have tried that method and it still does not run. I still get the error message below.
/Applications/CM\ Final\ Blitzkrieg/Activate\ New\ Products\ -\ CMFB.command ; exit;
hiewlaifamily@192-168-1-118 ~ % /Applications/CM\ Final\ Blitzkrieg/Activate\ New\ Products\ -\ CMFB.command ; exit;
LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Applications/CM Final Blitzkrieg/CM Final Blitzkrieg.app.
[Process completed]
I guess those backslashes are escaping the spaces? I'm not knowledgeable about Mac script syntax but at first I was thinking those alternating slashes can't be intentional; but then it seems they preclude every space so guess it is. good luck!
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10 hours ago, BFCElvis said:
It's funny that you should ask for that. There are 2 scenarios doing what you've asked for. The titles of the scenarios are:
"DF Metal on Metal (Comet vs Panther)""DF Metal on Metal (Pershing vs Tiger)"
Kinda what you had in mind?
We hadn't planned on doing an AAR. Maybe we should but I don't think there would be enough time to do it before the module is released. Rather than giving spoilers on one of these, we should wait until you get it in your hands.
Heavy metal sounds like it indeed!
Good! I guess there are still more minds of similar 'desire'.
And although I always enjoyed the beta AARs I won't mind unspoiling these myself
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1 hour ago, IanL said:
That would be so cool - take my upvote
Another one here. Also I'd say a good number of assets could be reused.
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Nice surprise, looking forward to this!
Some beta AAR with Pershings and Comets mingling with Panthers or other big cats would be noice
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57 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Well no but frankly if we are going by body count Israel should be in on Ukraine by some of this logic. (https://books.openedition.org/obp/10953?lang=en).
Jews were actually protected citizens under Islamic Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi
There were violations. For example in North Africa in and around 1100 AD but when looking at the entire Arab world they treated their Jewish citizens much better than anything they were getting in Europe. Second class citizens to be sure but Jews were lower class citizens - if they were granted citizenship at all - everywhere for centuries. Why single out the Arabs who by comparison fairly tolerant and actually had legal protections in place?
I am at a loss as to the theory here. Arabs murdered Jews “for 500 years” (which is not really true) so…what? Israel has a right to exist as a state, there is no debating that fact. But what does that or alleged, and frankly inflated, abuses by the Arab world going back to the Roman Empire have to do with anything? Or heavy handed prosecution of a IDF military campaign in Gaza in 2023-24?
I mean if we are in a crusade for 2000 years of injustices that line of injuries parties is going to get pretty damned long. And I think we all came to agreement that historical “guilt and shame” is not healthy for any party moving forward.
Dont get me wrong, the Israelis should not be subject to marching into the sea as the only option. I think their nuclear weapon stockpile put paid to that some time ago. However, it should not be the only option left to Palestinians either.
Fwiw Morocco protected it's Jews during WW2 and there's still much goodwill between a large part of both populations.
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20 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:
I have just started to read "GENESIS 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War" by Dan Kurzman.
830 pages with footnotes and index.
I bought it to help me make my CMFI PALESTINE 1948 mod.
He said he interviewed lots of Arab participants (of 1948) right before the 1967 war.
I hope it has a fair and balanced perspective.
I tend to skip ahead and then back so I already read a sad part where the Jews had 2 kidnapped British sergeants. Gruesome stuff. I can see maybe why the British didn't want these old Haganah guys back in the UK.
Fwiw watch (part) of the interview I posted earlier. I think it's a good one for opening perspective.
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16 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:
I have just started to read "GENESIS 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War" by Dan Kurzman.
830 pages with footnotes and index.
I bought it to help me make my CMFI PALESTINE 1948 mod.
He said he interviewed lots of Arab participants (of 1948) right before the 1967 war.
I hope it has a fair and balanced perspective.
I tend to skip ahead and then back so I already read a sad part where the Jews had 2 kidnapped British sergeants. Gruesome stuff. I can see maybe why the British didn't want these old Haganah guys back in the UK.
Don't know that book but yes 'terrorist' tactics were common on all sides at that time.
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52 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:
In my book, "you are second class non-citizens with no rights, and we reserve the rights of the majority population to murder you en masse without consequence if you: act uppity; speak of having rights; fail to convert on demand; there's a plague or other misfortune; become too successful for your station; or they just feel like it" fits the definition of living under a terrifically violent subjugation. The notion that the Arabs were tolerant because they murdered their Jewish communities less regularly than Medieval Europe did isn't a convincing or very moral argument.
I've not seen much of an argument coming from you so far, just "this book explains why the West is to blame [frankly a tiresome reductionist trope]" and "your argument is incorrect" without expanding on what you consider factually inaccurate. I'd be glad to debate actual arguments, but currently I'm not too sure what the difference would be if you put me on your ignore list.
I haven't yet but I guess don't bother, as you are clearly not interested in other perspectives than those you uphold as absolute truths as far as I'm concerned.
PS if you are it's better for PM I'd guess.
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Just now, The_Capt said:
Ok, you gotta back that one up. As I recall the Arab world was pretty damned tolerant of religions “of the book” so long as they paid their taxes and stayed in their lane. Are are we talking Babylon here?
Compared to pogroms in Europe?
Yeah I've never put someone on my ignore list but for self protection I might do soon for him.
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4 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:
The Arabs spent nearly one and a half millenia subjecting the Jews with extreme violence as a matter of sheer routine.
The British barely even spent 25 years in the Palestine Mandate, oppressing the Jews at least as much as the Arabs.
And the Palestinians received repeated offers of a nation state, starting with the 1947 partition plan. The reply was the same every time: "we get all of it; you all die and disappear".
Fwiw you are pushing propaganda as the absolute truth. Even Jewish acquainces who fought with the Haganah (and weren't welcome in Britain until very recently for that reason), which I have spoken to in person, don't support your version of the facts.
Ciao
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8 minutes ago, Probus said:
If what this admittedly armchair historian points out is that the Palestinians were offered states at different times and for different reasons they said not acceptable.
So they are still at loggerheads.
I know about the history, imo it isn't 'strange' they refused the specific offers thar were made at the times they were made.
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28 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:
It's because it is the truth. Not all things are open to discussion, many things are frankly indisputable historical facts, such as "the Holocaust happened", "slavery and Jim Crow laws were immoral", etc.
My argument wasn't even about "is Israel right or wrong in the war" but about established facts which no serious historian questions regarding the first half of the 20th century, and the background set by several centuries of Arab oppression of the Jews: the Jews had an undeniable right to a nation state, and there was never any way on Earth that the Arab majority would accept losing their "right" to oppress them. That is what caused the conflicts with Israel, and they would have occurred no matter what the West, the Jews or Israel ever did.
Arab oppression or European oppression? The funny thing is that while you grant the Israeli people a right to a nation state (which I don't deny; as a matter of fact it's a done deal), you don't allow the Palestinians the same right.
Anyway I don't like to repeat myself, see my previous post.
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3 hours ago, Anthony P. said:
My one objection to that notion would be that... it's just, objectively, completely and utterly false.
There's no mental gymnastics in the world which can explain away these three fundamental truths:
1, All nations have been recognised as possessing the right to self determination for over a century, including the Jewish nation: ipso facto, Israel had the right to be founded. Additionally this means that the Jews had the right to determine how they would be ruled: they wished to reside in a democratic state with full rights afforded its citizens; since no Arab state meets those standards even today in respect even to Arab citizens, it's beyond disputing that a multi cultural one state solution would never allow the Jews neither democracy nor equal rights, since it would entail being a minority in a state dominated by the same Arabs who had for over a millenia violently subjugated them and at best tolerated them as second class non-citizens.
2, The Jews had a right to founding a state in the Palestine Mandate because A, they had an uninterrupted presecence and connection to the region and B, there existed no prior state there which that would conflict with.
3, a peaceful partitioning of the lands was proposed well in advance, accepted by one side, and thoroughly rejected by the other side which verbatim replied that their preferred course of action was "a war of extermination".
No "perfidious Albion" or "decadent West" argument in the books can twist that into creating a "all the peoples of Palestine lived in harmony until the West came along and ruined it" narrative, not one which concerns itself with truth at least.
Well you can believe whatever version of History and call it absolute truth how much you like; I rather stay with the version of events as researched and presented by vetted historians.
It is interesting you feel the need to call your version 'the truth' so many times. In my experience such behavior doesn't indicate a strong argument. Anyway, I don't think any further response from my side would bring any constructive dialogue so I wish you all the best.
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2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:
So, support the allies in 1944 but also the axis? But I forgot, we can never use WW2 as an example anymore. A war where we supposedly did defeat the enemy and tried to eradicate the philosophy of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The wars since then have all been lost or partially won. Call me stupid all you want but I HAVE picked 1 side in this case. You equate it to supporting mass killings of civilians. I don't. Israel can answer in the ICJ. maybe you have already rendered a verdict. Also, should our own soldiers not support only one side, our own side? In a future conflict.
@The_Capt I met a wonderful Canadian couple about 20 years ago. She was a teacher in Saskatoon. Unprompted she somehow brought up the (new?) direction of the curriculum of her elementary school. Government directed curriculum. "First Nations". Maybe I am all wrong but it seems to be about instilling in white people from as early an age as possible some type of guilt for the past.
I know you were Canadian Forces active duty in Afghanistan. I don't know for sure but maybe now you are a civilian employee academic type professor/instructor of the Canadian Forces in some type of war college or armed forces type university? Did that require you to go to a civilian school to get a degree? I had started an online degree, a masters in social work, I was disgusted by the intro course to diversity and all the same trappings of white guilt/blame it tries to instill/teach/indoctrinate.
A comment was made about "North American voters". Now I suspect you meant white voters. Or maybe it was a general comment about the current low level of intelligence/intellect/IQ in people. Low Information voters is the term maybe? If the mantra to whites is to feel guilty and ashamed of the past to understand how non-whites feel...then the same low information/intellect/IQ people of non-white voters just pick-up the corollary. "I am not responsible for my feelings. It is someone else's fault based on the past. I am owed something. I can't be held responsible for my actions. I am oppressed." I have seen a press conference by native American groups openly praising the 7 October attack by Hamas with aspirations of how this might help them get "their" land back. Another video I saw showed an African American watching a pro-Palestine protest and he was asked what he thought. He said he felt a kinship to them as he was also living in occupied land.
I am here today as the first day of the future. white, yellow, black, brown, red, whatever. Move forward to achieve prosperity and security. Don't have an agenda of restorative justice or whatever for the past. The US Armed Forces has gone more woke than ever. Meritocracy is apparently out the window. Both the US Armed Forces and many airlines now have a goal to get more non-white pilots. Them being non-white is the number one aspect of the application process. Will it help us win a war? We used to be told to be color blind. Now they instruct us to see the color of the other guys skin and make certain changes in how we treat them.
I thought this was a good thread and some folks here were very smart. I could learn. I still feel the same way but I also see now that the current pathology of wokeness and "identity politics" is very widespread.
The image in my signature is just a modern take on an old flag used in the early 1800's.
Without trying to give Elvis more work, my comment about sides was about choosing between Palestinian vs Israeli people.
I don't know why you bring the woke stuff in this, but fwiw I'm white and I don't feel guilty or ashamed for things other people did in the past; whatever their skin colour was. I wasn't there.
That isn't to say that being informed about the less rosey colored parts of our history is a bad thing. This isn't a zero sum game. In fact one or my grandfathers participated in a colonial war, I don't think he did 'bad' stuff but I wasn't there. Not everything my country did there was bad, but according to todays standards (which I mostly endorse in this case) it was not a 'good' war. I don't feel guilty of it, but I like to see it for what it was.
I don't want to call anyone stupid, just my opinion that it is a stupid position to grant 'things' or 'humanity' to one people but not to another people. I grant Jewish/Israeli people the same right to live as I grant it to Muslim/Palestinian people. I don't support Hamas or the Israeli regime.
The perspectives we all hold come forth from our experience in life. I was granted the fortune of having travelled many parts of the world and get to know various peoples and cultures. It has provided me, at least I like to believe so, with an open mind towards other perspectives.
I wish the same for everyone and hope one day the people in 'the holy land' can also live in peace together.
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1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:
I guess I am older than you and retired. I am lucky I don't have to act woke and get on the hate whites blame whites band wagon. I don't see why you went down that path here. Earlier you had asked if racism was a reason to support Israel. Then I was just calling you on your own racist comment that came out of nowhere.
Personally I'm not a big fan of the extreme 'woke bandwagon', although neither of the other extreme side (although woke literally means 'alert to prejudice and discrimination', which is a good thing imo).
That being said, history is quite clear and we (the West) weren't always the bright beacon of civilization as we'd like(d) to see it.AFAIK he asked whether racism played a role in how some people seem to not care about the bloody death toll the Israeli regime is (and has been) causing in Gaza at the moment. I think it does.
Also imho it is stupid to 'support' only one side. Because supporting one side exclusively defacto means denying the other side, both have millions of people, (of a normal) life. Does supporting one side mean you don't care whether the people of the other side get slaughtered in the many thousands? That is not a humane perspective imho and goes well beyond any woke bandwagon; that's just supporting mass killings of civilians.
Don't know about you, but that's not my cuppa. -
On 12/26/2023 at 6:20 PM, kohlenklau said:
I did now. Thanks. Good stuff.
EDIT: Does anyone have any articles that look into what Hamas thinks or is thinking or what Gaza "Palestinians" think of Hamas and the current war?
It's a bit of a lengthy video, but I think it describes the perspective from 'overthere'
in a good way. I'm not a fan of Piers Morgan but this is a good interview imo:
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23 hours ago, The_Capt said:
I do agree that this entire thread is growing tiresome and we simply are not going to agree. But let’s be frank and let me ask the real question. How much of this is western biased and good old fashion racism against Arabs for all the trouble and pain we have gone through in that region? We were well programmed to hate Arabs in Hollywood and not so subtle machinations of western Christianity over the last 20 years. And now that something looking a lot like ethnic cleansing of a pseudo Arab state (or whatever) is happening people are tying narratives in knots trying to somehow justify Israel’s actions….because you are really ok with that?
Too much I guess, unfortunately. I guess for plenty people in the West (including here) Arab lives are simply worth less.
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That being said, for anyone wishing to (better) understand the roots of the current problems in Israel/Palestine (and the broader ME) and how it's basically a European/Western created problem exported to the region, I picked up an interesting book at the airport during my recent holidays: "A line in the sand", by James Barr (2012).
Thought it was a good read, shows some interesting insights in the not so friendly dealings / Imperialistic rivalry between the UK and the French, while being allied in WW1 and WW2.
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8 hours ago, Beleg85 said:
So far only sign of Russian collapse is acute lack of eggs...but it's better than nothing I guess. Sometimes a pebble can start an avalanche.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Egg good
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14 hours ago, Kinophile said:
Yep.
Also, ref Rotterdam, who the only reason it worked was that Belgium had no useful defense or means of striking back.
Although Rotterdam is not in Belgium
. Not that Netherlands had the means to lay waste to any German city.
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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:
What are your predictions for the war in Ukraine in 2024?
Here are mine:
Increasing Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian towns and cities.
Russia will take Avdiivka before spring, and also close the Robotyne pocket. Then the frontlines will not move much more before summer.
Ukraine will attempt a new offensive in early summer, and it will be in the north, east of Kharkiv, where Russian defensive lines seem less strong. The aim will not be to liberate key territory but to cause maximum losses and for the political objective to show Western sponsors that the war can still be won.
The drone war will enter a new stage where the off-the-shelves commercial drones are replaced with mass produced purpose built drones, and the numbers of drone attacks will increase massively. Instead of single drone attacks, we might see several working in cooperation. Increased use of drone-dropped tear gas.
No predictions, I'll leave those for the tarot card layers ;-). But I hope for renewed, stable, support for the Ukrainian effort on both military, economical and political level.
Although I guess we'll indeed see more advanced on the UAS field, hopefully with the advantage to the Ukr side.
I wish everyone here a happy and healthy 2024!
Tank v. tank spotting.. (what a ***** mess)
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
Spotting can definitely be finnicky at times, but overall I'm glad there's no guaranteed spots. It would probably improve some situations but undo much of what makes CM spotting great (compared to other games).
I deal with it knowing that the enemy has to deal with it as well.