Seedorf81
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Posts posted by Seedorf81
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
I sampled it. I think it's the usual uninformed political bias that is there to get clicks.
There's a huge number of very complex reasons why recruitment in the military is down across all democracies, and being "woke" is most likely not one of them. The biggest problem is that there's a general labor shortage across the board. Try getting an electrician or a truck mechanic or a roofer. Can I not get someone to build my porch because of "wokeness"? No. The US is short 80,000 long haul truckers. Is this because there are gender neutral restrooms at truck stops? How about the pilots who can earn $400k a year who are in short supply? Transgender flight attendants?
I could go on and on, but I'm giving this BS more time than it deserves already.
As for the US, there definitely is a shortage of recruits. This has been going on for some time now, even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put a strain on recruitment. The number one reason I see cited is because people can make more money, safer, and with less constraints on their life elsewhere. This means the military is now appealing to people who want it for a career rather than a way to pay for college (the huge incentive to get people to sign up).
Steve
Well, I think he is less biased than the title implies, he says himself (9 minutes in video) that the recruitmenttroubles cannot be explained by woke-issues alone.
He mentions:
- changing motives from the new generations,
- the effects from social media and internet,
- income,
- the fact that young people want fun, succes and more pleasant things than being in the Army,
- the fact that people aren't driven to join the army through poverty anymore,
- the "lessening "of patriotism, of being proud of your country,
- the difference between rural and urban numbers,
- the difference in recruitment numbers between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.
- that Poland ("Not so woke") and Japan have the same recruitment problems,
and more.
So he concludes himself that wokeism isn't the main problem. He says that he current recruitment is a problem, and a serious one.
Like I said, I agree on that point and I see that it is happening in the Netherlands, too. Young people just don't wanna join the Army as young people did decades ago. (I can't blame 'm, btw.)
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1 minute ago, JonS said:
Does he mean all those regiments that were named for minorities - like the Scots, Irish, Welch, Gurkhas, Devon, Hampshiremen, and such like?
Yeah, that effort Goes back a few years. I understand it never really worked.
I'm looking at the video from the moment I posted my post, to see whether I (after seeing it twice yesterday) it is as I said in my comment. I'm not even halfway, but you already react, while it is seems impossible that you saw the whole video in between the time of my post and your comment.
Did you see the whole video?
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Attempt to change direction of thread..
Way back we discussed the striking difference between amounts of Russian soldiers coming from big cities (almost none) and those from rural area's (loads).
And I stumbled on this surprising video from a guy who checked out British Army demographics and recruitment-issues.
Do not be fooled by the title of his video, this is not a crazy rightwing nutcase or woke-hating dumbass.
His research and investigation are quite factual as far as I can see, and the title of his video is based on the fact that the UK government and Army for years and years tried to make the Army as inclusive as possible by making it easier for women, LBTH, minorities etc, ("Woke influence") to join up, but he discovered that it did NOT work out as planned. And partially because of that, the British army has huge problems with getting enough recruits/volunteers.
My understanding is that this problem is also playing up in the Netherlands, and I suspect in more West-European countries. (No idea if it is a problem in the USA). It has a possible profound effect on the near-future strenght of (some) Nato-countries. Which connects this issue directly to the Ukraine-Russo war, because of escalatory possibilities.
If you do think his conclusions are unjust or too far fetched, please let me know.
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Short article on drone-war at Cherson front.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67991772
Interesting quote:
"On the outskirts of Kherson in an icy field, pilots practise drone flights with plastic bottles tied beneath them, in place of grenades.
It takes just 14 hours of training to qualify as a drone pilot. Ukraine's government is encouraging people to take part in free training, as well as to manufacture drones at home to send to the front."
Just fourteen hours! Training a recruit to be a decent shooter with a rifle might even take longer than that!
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2 hours ago, JonS said:
Do you? I'd call it entirely unsurprising.
Well, with Trump possibly/maybe/perhaps having more legal trouble and hence possibly/maybe/perhaps being excluded from the nomination, Desantis possible/maybe/perhaps only had to defeat Haley.
And if you're doin' bad, but you're remaining opponent is also doin' bad, why not hang on a little longer?
It's pretty obvious to me that neither of 'm cares a lot about the USA as a whole..
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Just now:
Trump's chances getting bigger?
DeSantis "suspends" his campaign, endorses Trump.
Pretty unexpected, I think.
Not very good news for Ukraine.
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58 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
That is crazy. I was on one of these - working out of SACLANT - over 20 years ago. That one was around 25k…and it was huge. 90k is just another level.
Looks like another big "succes" for mr Putin.
He's finally succeeding in waking up the dormant bear, it seems. If people doubted the West's resilience , this exercise is gonna give a little indication what can and/or will happen when Nato-The West is getting ready for a fight.
I hope that the Russians will realise that they don't stand a chance if push comes to shove, but making wise decisions hasn't been their greatest achievement so far.
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Biggest Nato exercise since Cold War not 40.000 (originally planned) but 90.000 participants.
"Steadfast Defender 24" from feb - may.
31 Nato-members and Sweden.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-01-18/eucom-nato-russia-war-12716615.html
(Looks paywall, but first 4 articles free, so it's available).
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18 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat - was IanL said:
Cool. Back in 2016 I heard about this program "Dutch police fight drones with eagles" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37342695)
It got cancelled in 2017 because training the birds proved harder than expected "Dutch police will stop using drone-hunting eagles since they weren't doing what they're told" (https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-netherlands-eagles-rogue-drones)
Perhaps every little bit helps. I wish them luck.
I spent some time on the Final Blitzkrieg pre-order page and ran out of likes, so here a:
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1 hour ago, billbindc said:
I'm more interested in what damage is actually being done to the T-90.
Optics?
Gun?
Ammo explosion?
What else?
Gunner, perhaps. With such a pounding the inside of the tank must be a terrible place. And the turret would be turning this weird continious way if that gunner was wounded or killed, and slumped over on the turretcontroller.
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5 minutes ago, dan/california said:
The one thing you have to remember about Prig is that he was not promising peace and bread, he was promising to fight harder and more competently. This might have limited his revolutionary appeal.
More generally I think if Russia really has a bottom up political convulsion it will be very much like the Arab Spring. A random spark in a random place, except the fire department manages to pour gasoline on it instead of water.
Yeah, trouble is that nobody knows what will really happen. I do think however that 2024 will be a year with more surprises than 2023.
Climate, China, Biden/Trump/other, Venezuela, Iran, North-Korea, Russia, Africa, Israel, new global virus, just some things that are in motion or may be big troublemakers. And probably some things we never expected.
We live in exciting times, that's for sure..
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
I don’t think the risk is with Putin. It is the Russian people. Despite our tendency to dehumanize them and plaster all sorts of broad brush assumptions, they are in the end people. As these stressors stack up over time eventually something is going to break.
As far as I know most revolutions and uprisings have one or more underground/resistance/rebel - groups that do have a decent "organisational structure" with active planning and communication. Sometimes they're small in size (Nazi-Germany), sometimes huge (Afghanistan). Some are only strong in a country's rebellious area's (Yemen), while others can be found almost throughout the entire country. (Vietnam, Algeria 1950's).
Those organisations usually make plans for what to do, and how to act, when the opportunity for "the revolution" arises.
They're all a bit like embers in a dying fire. Waiting.. but as soon as a new piece of wood is thrown upon those embers the flames suddenly come back to life.
The Prigozhin-revolt was not one log into the fire, but an effin busload of logs! Even in Russia most people, and certainly any "revolutionaries" must have realized that something big was going on. I think the storming of the Bastille in France may have been less huge in every aspect (except for the final result, that is).
But I haven't heard of ANY streetfighting ANYWHERE in Russia, because revolutionary groups took their chance. Nowhere, as far as i know, were huge demonstrations reported. No attacks on governemental institutions, no riots, no protests, not even minor disturbances, no cheering crowds. Not the least bit of chaos! Such a huge country, but nowhere any noticable support for, what after a few hours was stunningly obvious for even the stupidest of onlookers, an uprising on the way without any opposition!
But nothing but silence..
And that for me indicates that we will not see a people's uprising in Russia. Maybe someone close to Putin succeeds in killing him, or maybe he falls terminally ill, but I cannot see a second "storming of the winterpalace".
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5 hours ago, danfrodo said:
some good bits here today. RU city steam system pipe breaks, flooding streams w scalding water. Never seen that before.
So we see all these RU cities w infrastructure breakdowns -- is this just due to the heavy cold snap hitting RU along w bad infrastructure? Or is there sabotage going on also? Anyone have any info on this? Is it just that this cold snap so bad that it brought to the surface failures waiting to happen?
Meanwhile, RU taking very heavy losses, day after day after day. Putin must be feeling very confident to do this. It may be really stupid, I don't know, but it does show a lot of confidence.
Well, his great example is some dude called Josef Stalin and that guy set the bar for what you can do to ordinary Russians pretty high.
During the first, most deadly, winter of the Leningrad siege (end 1941- begin 1944) there was no infrastructure, no heating, no running water, and worst of all NO FOOD. In the worst period workers got 250 grams of bread PER DAY, but people without jobs got 150 grams. And the Germans bombed and shelled the city mercilessly.
So how did the leader of the Russian people react? (Again, Stalin's behaviour is greatly admired by Putin.)
He made the starving people of Leningrad "voluntarily" and publicly ask for LESSENING OF THEIR DAILY RATIONS!
So if anyone thinks that a horrible winter with infrastructural breakdown will soften Putin's "confidence", I wouldn't get my hopes up.
(One average loaf of bread is about 800 grams,btw.)
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9 hours ago, Offshoot said:
Because it is so rare, some armour v. armour, with a Bradley bullying a T-90M.
Best "Shoot and scoot"-example I ever saw, and boy, that Bradley commander has HUGE balls!
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25 minutes ago, Carolus said:
Wake up in New Zealand, get to the desktop PC, log into the Ukrainian drone volunteer server, download the assigned coordinate list for patrols, active the drone swarm, slurp a 1000 calory cup of bubble tea while burning Russians alive on the other side of the world, log off to write a report and mail it with the camera footage to your Ukrainian liason officer, stand up and get pants.
Dystopias can be funny.
Funny, unless a Russia-supporter somewhere in the world tracks you and sends his own micro-drone with enough explosives to mame or kill you. He, or she, happily logs off, writes and sends the report, and gets dressed for the day.
If this "manhunt" became a reality, it would solve the world's overpopulation-problem quite quickly, I fear.
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6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Would have to be able to surge, so I would triple that number to give flex. Then you need a sustainment ratio for losses and rotations - one cannot leave an FPV operator on the front line for 365 days and expect reliability.
I would estimate a corps of about 5-6k would be required, including a school house to train up replacements. Then you have got C4ISR to deal with. But say you want to saturate an area with 20k FPVs...to say, do a minefield operation. That would take the entire corps at 4-5 flights per day. In an area about 5 x 20km?
No, I think we are going to need some autonomy at work here, or deconfliction and coord is going to get unmanageable.
I always wondered why armies didn't use old(er) people. (Except for the German Volkssturm in ww2, of course.) Not frontline troops, that's a no brainer, but driving ambulances or trucks, for instance. Doing repair stuff and doing maintenance, cooking and cleaning. Communications and what not. All the jobs that older persons (yes, also women) can do, and that will free younger people up to do the frontline fighting.
Since Ukraine is struggling with manpower, why not using fifty or sixty-year old (or older, even) men and women to fly drones? I know, a lot of older people are not good with modern technology, but a: there are loads and loads of old people (I'm 61, by the way), b: at least a part of them could learn how to use drones and c: they're more expendable than young people, future-wise. (I know, dubious argument for some, but still valid.) And d: because they already live on a pension, you don't even have to pay 'm much!
I'm serious. For flying a drone you do not have to be physically superfit, you need to be smart. And some old people are smart. Shouldn't be too difficult to find 5000 clever pensioners, would it?
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1 minute ago, Kinophile said:
Well, to start - a lot of those were shaping/recon ops for a massive amphibious invasion and follow-on ground war. Dieppe was in many ways a test, a bloody one but that directly informed later ops to huge allied benefit. Every SOF operation did something useful, with varying results. Some were hugely important but relatively tiny - eg the sinking of a ferry carrying German (well, Norwegian
) heavy water before it could be used for an atomic bomb. See, I can read Wikipedia; well really, I read actual books about this stuff about three decades ago and ever since.
So no, I don't consider any of them useless, but I'll posit your comparison is.
A better comparison might be the German effort in North Africa, where the front was existential for the Brits but strategically opportunistic for the Nazis. There SOF raids had actual impact, outsized for the forces involved and were very difficult for the the Afrika Korps to defend against.
But that flips the analysis backwards, as it's Ukraine opportunistically and with low investment attacking a strategic Russian priority.
I was initially skeptical that what Ukraine has going on in Africa is having a strategic military effect; but I noted ref Russian elites being sensitive to effects from Africa and as @The_Capt has pointed out much more clearly, its more likely a geopolitical signalling effort, with effects that are currently unseeable at our worms-eye level.
Using this framework also negates the WW2 Western Europe comparison and North Africa and re-proves the point that we've run into many times in this thread - WW2 is not a good comparative starting point to this war.
But hey, you've discovered how to post a wikipedia link. Good for you.
I am really sorry that I offended you with what from my viewpoint is a real misunderstanding. I was trying to remember one of the places from a famous commando-raid, couldn't rembember it, and only then I realised that maybe Wikipedia could provide the answer. I typed "canoes", "commandoraid" and "WW2"in the search-window and immediately the page I mentioned popped up. Which I never expected, so I was genuinly utterly surprised about that Wikipedia-page. Reading my post back, I can see now that you may have thought that I was condescending at your expense.
I WAS NOT.
But still my apologies for leaving room for misinterpretation of my posting.
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11 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
To clarify Russia caring - I mean that whatever Ukraine does in Africa, the Russian operation can easily absorb, replace and respond to. If Ukraine does become distracting it won't be hard for the Ivans to focus and overwhelm them, or at the very least buffer them back. UKR would need a lot of US support to counter that, but US domestic politics has no taste for getting involved in Africa.
The Africa theatre is perhaps an inverse of the European one - its financially existential for the Russian elite (as a fresh source of money/power) but for Ukraine its an opportunistic expeditionary AO. The signalling to Western partners (as opposed to actually giving Russia pause - to and what would that look like? ) definitely rings true, with some caveats.
Ref Hollywood, sure I'm probably jumping the gun a bit. Plus no breakfast yet! Anytime I post here its fundamentally out of curiosity - how accurate is this? How well do I understand that, if at all? What is happening here Etc. Possibly it was Pre-emptive push back to avoid my delicates getting whapped....
Yes, the Russians can "easily absorb, replace and respond to" whatever Ukrainian does in Africa.
But in pre D-Day WW2 The Germans "could easily absorb, replace and respond to" whatever the British commando's did on occupied European soil. Lofoten, Dieppe, recon-raids, St. Nazaire, Lorient. (Oh, look at that! Wikipedia even has this, wow):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Commando_raids_on_the_Atlantic_Wall
Do you think those raids were useless, too? If not, where is the difference between those and the Ukranian Africa-actions?
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2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
(..)
A perfect, infallible non-human (but human adjacent) ruler with supreme power and awareness ruling masses who are essentially enslaved by adoration for the ruler and have surrendered all agency while basking in His glory.
(..)
A bit confused. Are you hinting at "Battlefront Steve" and us, the forummembers?
(I'm sorry, couldn't resist.)
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New wave of Russian missiles and drones.
51 Missiles. only 18 shot down.
8 Shahed -drones, all downed.
Civilian deaths at least 4, dozens of injured.
Some worries about why Ukrainian anti-air defence seemed to falter here and there.
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4 hours ago, Carolus said:
Do these deaths happen in a conflict that is fundemantelly challenging the global order?
Political self-interest is a reality, as well as prioritsarion of resources, and societies who forget that tend to be not around for long.
I thank you for the implications that other posts of mine were agreeable to you, despite being someone who came to this forum as a someone "outside the field".
Well, we cannot be sure. If global warming, which looks to me like an exponentially growing problem, or these wars turns out to make huge parts of Africa uninhabitable, we can expect the amount of asylumseekers and refugees to grow by millions and millions. And that will most certainly fundamentally change Europe. And maybe, perhaps, even global order.
Maybe not. But there is also no certainty the war in Ukraine is going to change the global order. Even if Russia would conquer all of Ukraine, which I personally think is impossible and way, way waaaaay more unlikely than the Africa uninhabitable-doomscenario, that wouldn't necessarely be challenging global order.
It would change life for the Ukrainians, very nastily so, but the West and the Russians and the Chinese and the rest of the world could continue hopping along in the same stupidity as the world does for the last decades. (Centuries? Millenia?)
And societies are as ignorant as individual humans, they (most of 'm) only realize that we should have done something to keep our luck/fortune/well-being, when it has been taken away from us.
I don't know if it can be a bit of a reassurance, but in the foreseeable future millions, or maybe even billions, of people are gonna discover that what people in Gaza and Ukraine are discovering now: the "good times" are gone, and it will take decades for them to come back again. But eventually they probably will.
And I do appreciate your postings. Typically human behaviour from me, perhaps? Hardly noticing or appreciating good or even brilliant postings, but immediately reacting to a post that SEEMS to call for criticism, so I can vent my opinion that, of course, is "much better" and "wiser" and what not. I could make excuses for that behaviour, but I think we all suffer from it, from time to time.
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7 hours ago, Kinophile said:
I'm at a loss for where the advantage or usability is for UKR SOF in Sudan. Wagner is out of the fight, WhatsHisFace fell out of the ultimate window and every experienced man is needed at home. There aren't enough UKR in Sudan to do anything more than minor irritation.
So why are UKR snipers dicking around in east bloody Africa? Why pop off Wagnerites in the savannah or jungle instead of Donetsk or Zaporizhia or Kherson where, y'know, it might actually make a teeny tiny difference? Why not have them in Rostov On Don, freaking out the fat HQ folks?
I'm baffled.
How did you come to the conclusion that Wagner is out of the fight? Perhaps the name doesn't mean as much as it did, but there are still loads of "Wagnerian" Russian troops/specops in Africa, and they most likely haven't turned into "people-loving-softies".
Ukraine army high command is smart enough to not let snipers "dick around" anywhere, I think.
Russia is still a serious presence in Africa, and they're trying to get even more influence. And in some cases with - for us, probably - surprising succes. This is Wagner in CAR, for instance:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67625139
And recent Russian influence in Burkina Faso:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67833215
Seems to me there's still some work to do for Ukrainian snipers.
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22 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:
Farewell to all that Arsenal of Democracy chest-pounding, I'm afraid, gents. Western military power has always been 'firstest with the mostest' since at latest Lepanto. But we now stand on the threshold of profound change, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
...While the West retains a large edge in innovating tech cuz "our Freedomz", it's the Chinese manufacturing behemoth that can flood the planet with cut-price fit-for-purpose knockoffs of anything you can hit with a stick, long before our 'shareholder value' guys can even roll out the first generation.
Their capacity -- including sophisticated supply chains -- is now an order of magnitude beyond the West's remaining heavy manufacturing centres in Korea, Germany and US-Mexico. The ramp rates are mind boggling now. And as with cars, batteries and wind turbines, so with miltech.
The Chinese state also can, and will, keep surplus heavy industrial capacity on the shelf for decades. Short of buying off China Inc. to supply our team instead, I just don't see how this changes.
Rebuttal?
If the current status in China stays as it is, you're probably right.
But there are some things brewing that may or may not cause huge problems for the current leadership.
The real estate bubble, and the manual labour job-problems could change things a bit, perhaps.
Real estate trouble:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67890633
Manual labour trouble:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67779222
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5 minutes ago, poesel said:
Because politicians want to stay in office. It doesn't help if your voters are dead.
As an autocrat, you don't have to worry about that. It may even help if the right ones die. Case in point: Russia.
Because we don't relate to them culturally. You care about people you 'know'.
I do care more about Ukraine than Gaza, although my co-worker is Palestinian and I personally know no one from Ukraine!?!
I guess this is some basic human tribal thing.Eh, I think the original post was about deaths in another - autocratic - country, so democratic politicians didn't lose any voters in their country.
And I expect, perhaps very wrongly so, that intelligent people, which the original poster most certainly is, can have the ability to look beyond "basic human tribal things".
) 
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Thanks for your honesty.
I understand that there may be some difference in the interpretation of what "woke" is. I for one do not have a clue where something is woke or not, but it seemed to me the guy in this video meant that (he says so in his conclusion) giving less qualified (in physical and mental, motivational and intellectuel and yes, also gender-related area's) people more chances than better qualified persons, is "woke". And does not seem to work in the long run.
A friend of mine followed a one and a have year long computer/office-training programme. At the end of that course a job at a municipality department was available, and from the thirty graduates about ten or twelve of them wanted that job.
They gave the job to the least capable person, because they wanted a woman with an "emigrational background". That didn't make the other applicants very happy. I found out that she had scored by far the lowest on all tests/exams from all students (I never told my friend about that), and for some years I had to have an occasional business-like contact with that women and really, she was incompetent. Not only because she didn't understand relevant parts of the Dutch language, but she was unneccessary rude, and didn't really knew how to use the computersoftware.
I never understood why they gave her that job, and not to one of the (much) more qualified applicants. It was, like a said, municipal job, so except for annoying people and slowing down things, no harm was done. But I think that in an Army it is vital to choose people that are the most capable if available.
I think that has more to do with common sense than with being woke or racist or mysogynistic or intolerant.