Lethaface

Ok, guess some of our politicians are a bit more generous with motions of distrust lol (mainly Wilders one of our local far right loons). So, do you think it will come to a vote?

This. is..... interesting??? (3rd fire in 24hours?)

Don't ask how many 'votes of distrust' our Prime Minister has survived.

While I think it's good that political pressure is kept on Germany to 'stay with the herd' ;-), I think people are too harsh on Germany. While this Scholz figure isn't my favorite politician (not that I have many about which I'm even positive lol), he barely had time in office when the invasion started. Although parts of their arms industry has continued to flourish, from my experience many German people still have an open wound regarding the 'war' and as such they are vehemently opposed to any German participation in any war efforts. Probably it will take time for Germany to take leadership in these affairs. However plenty of German weapons have find their way to Ukraine. Also; it seems we're sending some of our (bought from Germany) PzH-2000 to Ukraine and Germany has offered to train Ukrainian crews and will provide ammo. I think Germany has a good number of PzH-2000 in storage, maybe funds can be organized so various NATO nations can 'buy' these and forward m to Ukraine.

I guess NL will send a similar number of PZH2000. I haven't read about any numbers, actually our government / press didn't even mention we'd send the PzH2000 (just that we were sending 'heavy' materiel). I read someone asking, but PzH2000 is indeed compatible with Excalibur munition (operational with NL since 2018), although I guess Germany will send their own smart munitions. I wonder whether all the 155mm NATO artillery systems, both the SP and towed, will be of much use before the current 'hot' phase ends. Earlier this week (before I even read about the PzH2000s) there was a statement from our military commander, which entailed that much of the stuff that gets send now won't necessarily be used by Ukraine in the fight for Donbass, but rather bring the defense of other parts of Ukraine to a higher level. Of course it would be nice to see the daily drone footage featuring multiple rounds simultaneous impact 155 in action, probably even more accurate than Ukraine is already showing with their current artillery systems.

I think it's always good to entertain thoughts contrary to the line of thoughts/beliefs one is following. Although I think it's also good to hold their arguments to the same level of scrutiny as one would do regarding arguments that support one's own line of thought. Anyway others here are probably in a much better position to counter some of the arguments, while arguments like 'multiple Javelins are needed to destroy MBTs' or Stugna-P misses 80% of it's shots are imo not really worth going into. Even if those were true it doesn't change the number of losses documented by groups like Oryx. Although I agree we don't know much about the current situation of vehicles/fuels/ammo/manpower on the Ukrainian side. We do know that much of that is being shipped by the 100 ton on a daily basis and that Ukraine has actually mobilized a while back (and has quite some reservist with combat experience), while Russia didn't mobilize yet. Personally I'm not that worried about Russia being able turn tables into their favor, even if they are allowed to catch their breath. For one because apparently they didn't properly read Sun Tzu's chapter 'Fire Attack' (or any of it for that matter, seem like they're stuck in the middle of 'Il Principe'. But moreover because imo the main reason for the funky odor surrounding this war and their military performance is mainly caused by their political / strategic culture and the corruption and nepotism that has been allowed to fester under the same clique for two decades. These things can't be easily fixed from inside the military, change would have to come top-down unless the regime falls. Such changes take years or probably decades, even if the regime would want such a change. I'm throwing in this old article because I think it's a good analogy for Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine (probably got it from these forums a decade ago, could even be you who posted it lol) https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars Now there are obvious differences between Russia and the Arabic countries talked about in this study. But, there are also many similarities. Lack of leadership, training, corruption/kleptocracy, nepotism, lack of trust among the common soldiers, a history of 'befehlstaktik', the 'boss' is always right, etc. Imo those are the main reasons why the Russian army 'sucks', not because Russians are a different breed of humans; they aren't. My impression is that somehow Putin and his clique tried to change the army into a more modern, western alike, army and probably believed it succeeded. The initial invasion plan looked like a bit of an 'auftragstaktik' like 'plan'. Reorganizing the same elements in whatever nomenclature (regiments/divisions) won't do jack sh1t to improve their combat power in the short term. Not all of Russia's military units suck obviously, but do they have enough 'non-sucking' units to make a change? I don't think so, otherwise a change wouldn't have been needed in the first place. Sticking their best remaining units in trenches under continued Ukrainian shelling / drone strikes doesn't seem extremely risky for Ukraine, but rather for Russia's remaining combat power. Russia won't have another 'shot' on the same level as this one anytime soon. This was all they had, it failed and is now working on 'loss aversion' (imo in vein). The incompetent leadership, from political to strategic to operational level would need to change and be improved for another shot to have better effect. The army would have to be rebuild. Unless their political / strategic culture changes and they manage to get rid of a lot of the corruption and nepotism, the leadership won't improve. Given the current sanctions I guess it will be hard to rebuild their army, let alone improve it. Ukraine on the other hand is improving their army and will not sit still for Russia to start round 2. That is if there won't be NATO / security guarantees turning round 2 in a world war from the get go. Concluding I'm mostly worried about more loss of life for as long as the current conflict goes on. But I agree that if Ukraine is able, they should kick the house of cards down and force Russia at least back to the pre-February borders before they call it quits / agree to a ceasefire.

The issue with Lithography machines is they're that complex, reverse engineering 'm doesn't really 'work'. At least until now and afaik, obviously efforts with that effect will be ongoing. ASML for example doesn't provide China with the latest generation machines (they aren't allowed) but they do provide the previous generation. That might change in the future, China has large interests it doesn't change imo. Since basically USA gov. decides on this subject, China might be weary to provoke stuff by setting up shop bigtime for Russian army needs.

That would probably give China issues getting any new lithography machines of the same type, or getting their current ones serviced. AFAIK only Nikon and ASML provide these.

What's going on in this thread is unfortunately exactly what happened in EU politics. None of our countries are without flaws, but prefer pointing to the flaws in other countries. While I'm happy the people of Greece are in the EU, the application was a fraud with Goldman Sachs involved and the problems you mention were swept under the rug until the crisis hit. Blame Germany all you want, but if the 'whole system' is untouched I'd advise looking into it instead of expecting Germany/any other country to fix it. Blaming Putins invasion on Germany is stupid though. Not only Germany is dependent on Russian energy, other countries are as well and indirectly the whole EU is. The alternative was getting even more dependent on USA, which at the time wasn't deemed a good idea by anyone. Let's look forward how unity and solidarity can be implemented, not only for a short while because of this war. If we want EU to be a success story, it will require a compromise from every country and every citizen.

Not to take away from your advice of more analysis and assessment into low(er) level problems / achievements by Russia or Ukraine, I think it is very wise to try and learn from lessons that others (could) have learned (instead of having to experience/learn every lesson the 'hard' way). However, the sum of low-level problems with Russia's forces or Ukrainians achievements, don't necessarily add up to the systemic failure we see basically everywhere where there is a glimpse behind the curtain . Imo these are two different 'things' (identifying root cause VS using proper lessons learned for learning & improving). For example a project might fail simply because the sponsor has ran out of money during the project. In which case, it's still interesting to do a lessons learned on individual deliverables / cooperation, methodology (etc): what could we have done better? what went good and should be kept on the menu? Not doing the lessons learned at all, because of the large external factors, is a missed chance to learn & improve. But another traditional pitfall is to explain failing on a external/higher level from lower level stuff (in this example: finding reasons the sponsor didn't have enough money INSIDE the project team; what could we have done better so that the sponsor had more money (answer: nothing, wrong question). -- About a decade ago I read a study 'why Arabs lose wars', probably got the link through this forum. I found it a very interesting study and it connected with observations I made while travelling/visiting countries with varying degrees of corruption / favoritism. I have been thinking about this a bit over the last week, partly stemming from discussions with friends/colleagues/acquaintances who had trouble accepting the idea that Russia (still conceived as a global power etc etc) can make the mistakes that it did make. How can the Russian general staff / think tanks not 'know' all this stuff? These people can't connect the dots and feel that we're not seeing everything, Russia must still have something they're holding back, etc. In this thread the dots have already been connected by plenty, imo. The main reason why Russia will lose this war and (unless **** changes bigtime) all the next wars of aggression they start against any non-dwarf state with a serious army is: CORRUPTION and everything that comes from it (nepotism, etc). Basically the same answer to 'why Arabs lose wars'. That said, only a fool would then 'close the book' and conclude 'nothing to learn from this'.

Perhaps, but a WW2 infantry screen would have had AT-guns for longer range. Of course ATGMs are much better, but tanks have also improved since WW2; FLIR optics for commander/gunner, hunter/killer capability, laser warning receiver, programmable HE rounds, etc (although it seems the majority of Russian tanks in Ukraine aren't the latest/greatest, while they go against many top of the line ATGMs). Conceptually I guess it's not that different for a platoon of WW2 tanks travelling in the open to be ambushed by a PaK front, compared to a group of MBTs in the open being ambushed by ATGMs. Guderians push to the canal wouldn't have went so smooth if there'd been motivated and decently trained defenders everywhere along the route possessing AT weapons, or 'irregular' type forces being able to strike the supply lines. The perceived problem among German high command was that the mobile armored formations outpaced the leg infantry formations so much, that the tank formations would be vulnerable to getting cut off (although not everyone agreed with that). The (at least by me) perceived problem with the Russian forces is that they don't seem to have any infantry formations that are supposed to be moving up the 'frontline' and clearing out any remaining pockets of resistance / bypassed defenses in the hinterland (or in short, security for their BTGs). They just didn't have enough troops for what they were trying to achieve. Not to say that all the other issues they have aren't interesting (whether they stem from their own lackings or from Ukrainian efforts), but it is a fundamental problem to begin with.

No, critical thinking is encouraged here. However, after several encouragements didn't work the mood swayed into ridiculing morons.

He chucked some dykes.

Free flowing some ideas: * (More) Butcher & Bolt style raids against infrastructure inside Russia. ** Desired effect: drawing Russian attention to their border security. * Invading liberating large parts of Belarus using all forces along the border of Ukraine-Belarus for a wide advance into Belarus, cooperating/coordinating with the popular resistance. ** Desired effect: give Putin heart attack. ** Of course it won't be a real invasion, but special Military Operation for liberation / denazification of Belarus. * Allow the probes from Izium to advance with token resistance only, luring them further away from their main lines / extending the thin salient. Then when the main body moves up in the salient, Switchblade swarm/drone-arty hell rain. * Feed the media with 'creative' reports that large amounts of disruptive weaponry are being / is delivered in Ukraine, is in the process of being fielded for support in the East. Hundreds of Bayraktar and munitions, 1K switchblades, several brigades worth of T-72, BMP, AFVs, SP-A, etc. ** Desired effect: convince the Russians that they have to act fast or face even stronger resistance.

Well I didn't 'invent' these stuffs and indeed this is not about which side is better, let's stay far from that . The examples given was to show examples of why policy doesn't have to be a zero sum left vs right game. Also, my English is fine but not my first language and discussing these stuffs isn't something I usually do in English. With all that said: fascism is considered on the far-right extremist spectrum. For example in our country we have parties on the far right (not yet extreme, at least not en public) spectrum who are officially / basically want our country to be only for 'original' people and immigrants are encouraged to go back 'home'. Let's say they would get hold of power by a majority of the vote and have enough seats in parliament to change the constitution so that immigrants get less rights than 'original' people and for example can be discriminated against without repercussions. They also institute new police force controlled by the party (so like a paramilitary, not unlike SA) to help enforce the new laws. And why would we need new elections? In that situation we would have become a fascist country. Nazism is more of an 'occult' than a political ideology. The vehicle they chose for their 'political' ambitions was the NSDAP, a 'national-socialist' party. Now I think the name is just a placard, but 'national-socialism' can be interpreted as both extreme-left and extreme-right. Pinochet's administration was a dictatorship. I don't know too much about the policies of Pinochet, but I'm also not sure if it is useful to try to place a placard 'left' or 'right' on it. It would be arbitrary at best. Another interesting question is the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea'. Is North-Korea democratic? Is it a republic? No, definitely not. They identify with the extreme-left / communism, or at least once did. But their policies don't necessarily differ much from an extreme-right fascism state. So in my opinion, states like North-Korea / Nazi-Germany etc are first and foremost dictatorships / autocracies who lean to wherever they feel they need to lean and will call it left, right or center just to suit their control. If anything it's political travesty / flexibility to suit the needs of the day. The only principle they maintain is to stay in power at the cost of everything else. --- I'm not sure whether left-wing/right-wing is intentionally confusing, but confusing/inadequate it is indeed. I'm don't necessarily agree that a freedom vs control spectrum would be less confusing, mainly because of two reasons: * One could still 'claim' to be pro freedom but in practice be a control-state but explain that as a freedom state (in our country, we provide our people real freedom by deporting unwanted people to be free somewhere else ;-). Besides, an extreme form of freedom would not necessarily mean that everyone in society is as free as the other. * In many democratic countries there are a lot of political parties in the political spectrum, who position themselves on the traditional political left/right/centre spectrum. For example, here's a list of our political parties including their leaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_Netherlands How would it be less confusing for people to choose their preferred leaning, if they ditched the left/right and replaced it with freedom/control? Political parties being political I'm sure all of them would claim the best way of freedom with only strictly necessary control. And or party X claims that the way of freedom/control implemented by party Y is actually leading to less freedom for people, while obviously the other party will claim the contrary.

Lol, I began to state that in my opinion 'left' and 'right' are inadequate ;-). However in the political sense (except extremist, which don't really matter for democracies anyway, so are irrelevant when one actually considers discussing about pro / cons of political leanings), the 'left' spectrum is about social-equality, egalitarianism, regulation of 'the market' is necessary. Right spectrum is more about 'each men for his own', 'no regulation of the economy', 'the market will solve itself in optimal form'. Now those are by far not complete lists, but that's how political parties on the left vs right present themselves. Personally I feel that both/all schools of thought have merit and why not use the best of both worlds? Privatizing shouldn't be all goal in and of itself and surely has caused a lot of issues in many countries, at the same time there are plenty of examples of overregulating trying to accomplish social-equality. But people working on slave-labour wage double jobs without medical insurance is undesirable, so some regulation is needed. Preferably in a way as simple as possible which is actually enforceable and than IS also enforced. Coming back to your post, I feel that shoving everything which has been attributed to left/right and replacing that with the control / freedom concept is just more confusion upon established inadequate political concepts which lead to narrowmindedness. My political leaning is 'left-right'

@c3k so here we are Trying to establish as fact the idea that conceptual definitions of 'control' vs 'freedom' are aliases for 'the political left' vs 'the political right', is plainly wrong. The concepts of freedom and control(/oppression) aren't even in the same dimension, let alone ballpark, as political concepts/leanings like left vs right.

China doesn't need to invade Taiwan to blockade it.

AFAIK / IIRC they (RU MoD) had/has issues actually producing the Armata gun in numbers, so in reality it isn't installed on the (limited numbers) of actually produced T-90M. And indeed to be able to use the new Vacuum-1 rounds a new autoloader would need to be installed which doesn't fit the turret. All in all the 2012 prediction of T-90AM in game isn't far off from what the T-90M became in the end. Although there are only very limited numbers and afaik they haven't been seen in Ukraine 2022.

Although I think the terms 'left' vs 'right' are inadequate and lead to narrowmindedness, this description is far from accurate or complete. Anarchists are generally considered / see themselves as extreme left while those that want state enforced rules for discrimination and oppression of specific groups of people (fascists) are generally seen as extreme right. FYI large parts of Western Europe have been or are successful social-democracies for a long time. To not go off topic too much conceptually left is more about social equality while the right is more about each men for himself. But then there are many more perspectives. Generally the 'extreme' variants of either spectrum are considered to be conceptually similar if implemented in practice by a state. It always leads to autocracy / dictatorship. Anyway to describe right as freedom and left as control is far to simple besides plain wrong.

Good observer I guess, but after firing Javelin a 125mm HE magnet.

Unfortunately, I guess they can use jerrycans to fetch it at the pump?

Another company for the frontline

Thanks for the info. Let's hope countermeasures and counter attacks will be good enough to stall this offensive as well.

Can't remember exactly what they said, but IIRC the program it was on is decent enoug (althought that doesn't mean they were correct) and they brought some legal 'expert' to shine a light on it. To me it sounded logical that neither parties are allowed to use the installation for military advantage. For example, it would be a bit strange if you could post a couple of Javelin teams in the building and shoot up enemy tanks from it, while doing something about that would result in a warcrime for the enemy . Could be that the legal expert said that it was complicated and in such a case a court might well decide that it isn't fair/reasonable to declare the articles applicable to the situation.