BletchleyGeek

A link to the data of the 2019 election from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_parliamentary_election The only region where the "pro-Russian" part called "Opposition Party - For Life" got over 50% votes was the northern Donetsk region. Generally speaking, turnout is like 10-15% lower than in most EU countries.

Okay, that explains a lot. 歡迎您加入我們的家庭! It's a family that isn't afraid of throwing furniture at each other. You have a good point re getting away with genocide. Historically, Nazi Germany got away with QUITE A LOT until it made the mistake of launching a war of aggression on a neighbor.

The UKR Army had some serious fortifications there, but they were eventually forced out of them. Looks like a (for now) fighting withdrawal. The breakthrough towards Zhaporozhiy, Melitopol, along the Azov sea with the consequence of the likely encirclement of Mariupol will probably accelerate events there.

As some seem to so curious about how things look from the RUS side of the fence... here's some footage filmed on the Donetsk front, yesterday, by a Catalan TV crew. It looks like the relevant Russian authorities are very carefully vetting who gets where to see what https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/telenoticies/combats-ferotges-ciutat-per-ciutat-al-donbass-nexpliquem-un-des-de-dins/video/6146265/ Contrast the highly curated experience of these journalists with the approach from the information strategy of the UKR side, where we're pretty much left to drink from the firehose. Al-Jazeera has some pieces in similar style. The video is in Catalan, obviously, here are the main takeaways: - Russian ministry of propaganda leads journalists in a convoy to a zone they have recently "liberated". - They are taken to the site where an UKR truck was hit, with two UKR KIAs. Note that it is likely those persons have been there lying for some time. - Then they visit a village, and interview a family hiding in their basement. They didn't have the means to leave their house as most of their neighbours and have spent 3 days hunkering down. Note that there's no men of arms bearing age in sight, only women and children. - As the journos prepare to come back, a mortar barrage pins down everyone. On the way back, the Catalan journos give a lift to some officials of the fresh new Russian republics whose land rover got hit by the mortar barrage and destroyed. How informative is all that about how well or badly is this war of aggression going? What it confirms to me is that UKR has very little chance to hold out in the East, they know it, and they are doing a fighting withdrawal, taking casualties and trading space for time. Besides the families of the servicemen killed on both sides, the ones who suffer are the people who gets caught in the middle. Any peace that comes out of this will probably mean significant changes in the borders of Ukraine. Is that victory? Probably whatever means conserving independence is. The best source of information on UKR losses is... Wikipedia. UKR look serious given the more limited size of their force. The statistical outlier is that the ratio of prisoners to KIA/WIA reported sound to me like someone is counting every dead and wounded as a POW. Some of the takes on the conflict, and how UKR "provoked" Russia by "stealing" gas, just check out the comprehensive article on Wikipedia (we'll see there's been some disputes about gas since the breaking apart of the Soviet Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–Ukraine_gas_dispute and the bits of the most recent dispute So much for "stealing" sh*t, to be honest.

I think that's fake - there was a video of a meeting of Putin with the War Minister and the Chieff of Staff within the same timeline as the alleged dismissal.

Hi Steve! I was wondering how long it would take to smoke you out and have you post here. What are your thoughts on the equipment of the Russian Armed Forces we have seen so far? Do you think they're hiding the "cutting edge" stuff for yet another "special operation"? Do you think that you guys overestimated the capabilities of Russian industry to produce state-of-the-art equipment (and for the Russian armed forces to integrate it into its units)? There are many opinions out there (and I guess quite a bit of disinformation) that suggest that there's no real strategic echelon for the Russian Federation to support high-intensity combat operations beyond 10 days. To me, this looks a bit like the move AH did in 1938 on Czechoslovakia, a gamble based on the assumption the other side will fold before having to put the cards on the table... There's some serious research that suggests the Wehrmacht was "lucky" not to have to engage with the Czechoslovak army.

When I read the article it kind of sounded a bit archaic - railroads? like in the time of Von Moltke the Elder? But yes, if you want to move great volumes of stuff and fast... you use railroads (or ships).

I am pretty sure that getting to a crisis point has been part of the game plan (as a contingency or a milestone I don't know) since the civil war in Syria started, if not from the day that Bill Clinton (and George Bush later) laughed off the question put forward by Putin to join NATO. Following up the discussions on logistics, saw a video of some Russian soldiers helping themselves to the shelves of a supermarket in Melitopol, and I remembered this very good article I read back in Xmas https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/

I am pretty sure that didn't happen overnight, man. On the contrary all those string of successes as you say have made him convinced they can get away with this. FWIW looks like a Russian forward detachment is trying to make a run for Kiev city centre from the West. Intense images of combat, which you can also pick up on Google Maps with indications of "very slow traffic".

Just read that, looks like they are trying a night time air drop? That seems to be what's going on SW of Kiev.

Or their numbers, availability, technology readiness level etc. have been greatly exaggerated.

Just read that, looks like they are trying a night time air drop?

I found this map useful. Reading lots of rumours about Russian forces in the NE running low on supply and are foraging fuel and food. Difficult to make a guess, but it seems to me the Russian Armed Forces plan was counting on the UKR army to fall apart very quickly. Especially the NE seems to be they are much slower than planned. Looks like a double envelopment on Kiev became a single armed thrust. There are also reports that the 76th Airborne Division was earmarked to fly into Hostomel but landed instead in Gomel (right at the intersection of the borders between RUS, UKR and BEL). The UKR govt is doing the right thing by having a third party - Israel, country well known for its long held sympathy for all things Nazi - to broker a cease fire. But the rhethoric from the RUS govt doesn't make very optimistic tbh. Also, threatening Finland and Sweden... well, I guess we can all make our own minds about it.

Nothing to rejoice about other than seeing Russian citizens taking a political stance on the streets.

I agree that it's not something that will be happening tomorrow, and it would not be politically cheap. Good point re: 1st Gulf War. Same applies to the PLA: we may well be overestimating the difficulty of that operation. Okinawa was a difficult campaign, and the attacker came on top eventually as well with a huge human and political cost...

The PLA has been wargaming that invasion for like 70 years now. I am pretty sure they have figured out how to make it work, if the cost/benefit analysis works out. The capabilities of the PLA on air, sea and land are greater on paper, granted, than the Russian army, that has more "hands on experience". I would say that the US/ANZAC, and Japan capabilities are also "on paper" never actually tested. I said before that history isn't going in the right direction. All reactions to Russia's war of aggression indicate that the Chinese leadership was well informed of what was going to happen, and had plenty of time to prepare to keep a "straight" face. Paraphrasing a certain British politician: Russia must fail, and must be seen to fail. Otherwise, it will be just "might is right", and just that.

The other "front" needs not be overlooked. Lots of diplomacy needed in SE Asia to for something like NATO.

I think the calculation is that the fate of Ukraine will be a warning for Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia. I wouldn't discard a move on Taiwan if the response to Russia's war of aggression turns out to be weak or ineffective. I wouldn't be surprised either that Sweden and Finland ask to join NATO.

A Twitter account in English thay I have found useful and informative

I don't know what to say other than "take care" and that history is definitely not going in the right direction.

With the same parameters (1,130 m/s muzzle velocity, 2.5 height of starting location for the projectile), but with an elevation of about 0.37 degrees rather than 0, you get a ballistic trajectory which at about 800m reaches its zenith (at a height of about 5.25m) and hits the ground at about 2,000 meters. At such high speeds, a difference of arc minutes (like 20 arc minutes) is quite significant. But unless we're assuming a height differential of 3 meters between the point of departure of the projectile and the target, what you describe sounds to me like a quite "high and long" shot. I can totally agree with the statement that it was and is standard procedure to have some "firing solutions" (e.g. gun elevations and ranges) pre-calculated. You don't want to be doing "line search" (which is the procedure I used to figure out the elevation that was the best fit for what you described in your first answer to my post) in combat conditions (tired, scared, under pressure). Definitely not good for clear thinking and problem solving. Look, from my point of view there is Physics and there are... Unicorns. The former has behaved in the same way since probably a very short time after the Big Bang and hyperinflation ensued, and will probably go on until Boltzmann Brains are a thing. Certainly the relevant part of Physics - Newtonian mechanics - were an approximation of ballistics as good now, as it was in 1944, and as it will be in 2024 (unless the usual caveats apply, that is, the projectiles are really, really tiny, or go really, really fast). Unicorns are a most remarkable phenomenon, known under many names, like phlogiston, aether, mana, etc. It is well known as well that their properties change across time and space depending on the observer. I think Physics works, probably because in the Engineering School I got brainwashed or something. I also think that CMx2 is a reasonable physics simulator for ballistic trajectories and the misnomer that are "external ballistics". Judging from your later posts, I think we're in agreement re: Physics. I was wondering after reading the first one.

With this handy trajectory calculator https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/trajectory-projectile-motion one can make their own mind regarding point-blank ranges for World War 2 guns and projectiles. For the German Panzergranate 40, APCR, I get from Google a muzzle velocity of 1,130 m/s. Making a guesstimate that the gun height would be like 2.5 meters, I would say that "point blank range" (for a target in hull down like Cpt. Millers' Abrams is and a firer aiming straight for the mouth of the gun barrel) is about 200 meters, at that distance the height decay of the projectile is about 30 cms (218 yards and 1 foot for the US friends).

Just for the benefit of some readers, "point blank range" means "range with a flat trajectory". That is, the maximum range at which the projectile roughly flies along a straight line towards the target before the forces of gravity and friction with the atmosphere overcome linear acceleration and the trajectory becomes curved. Or in other words, the maximum range at which the gunner can set the gun elevation to zero degrees and be quite certain the shot won't be short. The shot can still miss for other reasons, obviously. As an ESL person who wasn't educated in the terminology I need to remind myself of this all the time when I read these discussions.

@Kicknuts chances are that the automatic DPI scaling compatibility support is the cause of your troubles (after looking at your specs they are similar to mine and I had something very similar to you). My advice is that you download one of the demos from BFC and follow @Schrullenhaft directions to see what works.