niall78

Here's the thing though - generally - at its best - the West as part of its advantages over more totalitarian  places -  has come to represent toleration  of a whole lot of things which are not necessarily the end of Human Civilization as many  who oppose such toleration seem to think . The West is not going to fall because of trans gender rights or any other sub group of people wanting to express themselves how they feel . Its going to be because of war ,   resource scarcity and global changes to our economic systems due to our continued mis use of the planet .

So why do it and then expect no response!!!
🤔 
Defence doesn't include mass murder of innocents.
I'll just leave it there...

Havent seen the news here yet but russia officially ended Armata development, citing its high cost as  mine clearing vehicle

Don't judge the Western Navies based on Russian Navy incompetence.
Let's look at Russian ship Caesar Kunikov

What protection does it have against small boats? Two twin 57 mm (2.2 in) DP guns

It is old Soviet tech, and most likely it does not work properly. If it works at all.
What else does it have? Well, guys like this.

This is absurd. It's no surprise that his tin can is now submersible (or at least what remains of it).
Now, let's look at Type 45 Destroyer because it is the main escort of the White Elefants.

What does this fellow have?
Two DS30B rapid fire cannon

Two Phalanx CIWS

By the way, here Phalanx fires at surface target
Two .50 Cals

It is already impressive but here is more. 
T45 usually have at least one helicopter

The name of the helicopter is Wildcat, and it can carry up to 21 LMM missiles. 

When this boi gets into the air, the swarm attack stops.
Is that all? Nope - as soon as vodka hits the fan 30mm will get their own LMMs

This is how LMM works (different mount)
The swarm of small boats is not a new threat. Western Navies have been preparing to counter it for a long time. But RU Navy haven't since difficulties of dumb Western Navies do not apply to superior Russian Navy and do not impede my thieving activity. Now RU chickens come home to roost.
Do not be dumb and do not be corrupt is the main lesson we can get from RU Navy drone debacle. 

Regarding Trump, hi from Latin America (Argentina) land of great football and sometimes populist egomaniacs...
I´ll just paste something I wrote in January of 2017 on another forum:
"Coming from a country with it´s fair share of populists in it´s history, let me tell you a couple of things about what will happen:

First: it´s not about policies, it´s not about facts, now it´s only about power and how to keep it

Second: the only thing that will be rewarded is loyalty, it may or may not align with skills, it doesn't matter any more

Third: it´s not about liberal and conservative, It´s not about democrat or republican, now it´s about trump or anti trump, there will be no middle ground to hide, both coalitions will have members of previous coalitions, those won´t matter much anymore, more republicans will be on Trump´s coalition because he was elected as one of course

Fourth: his only objective is reelection, and after that a third mandate, and a fourth and so on, to this end he will push any policy he deems useful, left wing or right wing, won´t matter, he sometimes will be align with former liberal/democrat ideas, he will take ownership of anything that promotes him, claiming it was his idea all along

Fifth: any source of check and balances will be targeted as traitorous, anti american, etc., this includes the press, other parties, the supreme court, whatever, anyone he sees as a member of the anti trump coalition is now a target, for now of rhetoric only, time will tell how far he will be allowed to go, and don´t think for a second there is something he won't do, or that he has any moral limit, he doesn't

Good luck trying to rationalize his government into anything other than an ego trip

His only weak point is succession, like every populists he hates the idea of giving power up, to anyone, even his children, he won´t groom a successor and get mad every time this point comes up

I sincerely hope current checks and balances work, but I´m not optimistic, lots of people will come under the spell, it´s tough times for anyone that can´t escape facts, reason, science, for those are now the enemies of the US government."
 
Not spot on in every point, but It came close to happen the first time around, now he has evolved and learned, it will be worst.
The paradox is that it was in the hands of Republican Senators to impeach and keep him out of office for good, they failed.
 
 

Nah it will not. If Trump get elected he can delay decision makings and troop deployment enough to get Europe tangled in a war alone. I don't understand how an idiot like Trump can compete in the race to white house but i'm not American.
The whole russian strategy is to isolate the USA, and i cant understand how are they that successful with it. It almost feel like you guys wanna lose the next major conflict of the human history.
NATO is a sheet of paper only held together by trust. If you guys betray that trust than you global hegemony will be lost. As soon as peoples around the world get a whiff of cowardliness from the USA they gonna look for other partners. Everything that makes you live on the level of standards that you accustomed is based on your country's hegemony. Once things go down they go down quick.
 
I don't know what you guys doing on the other side of the sea but everything seems messier by the week.

Zaluzhny actually admitted that he didn't deliver when in his Economist interview he called it his own personal mistake that he underestimated Russia's ability to regenerate force and resist the Ukrainian offensive this summer. With the fate of the nation at stake, I think it's pretty clearly Zelensky's role to decide if Zaluzhny should stay on the job and the latter making public statements about what should be done in opposition to the administration he serves isn't making that any easier. What politics there is *should* be in Zelensky's corner. Zaluzhny...like MacArthur as mentioned above...is inserting himself into that arena and will have only himself to blame if that gets him fired. 
Note: I say all of the above while liking and respecting Zaluzhny but generals don't get to call the shots in the kind of government I want to support. 
 

Sounds like they could use a MRBC - Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission! 😉
An independent supranational organization that serves as the Sphere-wide official registrar for all legal mercenary units. Google it. 🙃 

This needs to be repeated until the end of time. The idea that the next generation is spoilt, incompetent and incapable of handling what their forebears could might sound convincing if it weren’t for the fact that every single generation throughout history seems to have believed it.
And yet, the world continues to spin.

"Drug"?
What a monster.

Hopefully we'll get another person of reason and sound judgement who also thinks earth is 6000 years, amongst the many wise beliefs of mike johnston.  But maybe we'll get an improvement as the current speaker is somewhat flawed as he thinks the earth is round and goes around the sun.  
American taliban.  

You are clearly either delusional or this is just a deliberate campaign of mis- information - I'll be blocking you going forwards .

Ok so let's end all this horsesh#t.  The great thing about the US is that they put everything out to the public.  No other nation on earth is as transparent.  So here is what Miller actually said:
https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-4-2024/
First as to "no more money"
"QUESTION: Thank you. Let’s discuss Ukraine a little bit. How long will the latest package that you guys have sent already in December will give operations until they run out of funding again?
MR MILLER: I will let Ukraine speak to that because that pertains to – and my colleagues at the Pentagon may have some additional insight to offer on this. But ultimately, that’s a question to Ukraine to speak to because it goes to their rate of expenditure and other really military questions.
But I will say that we do need Congress to act. We are out of funding here. We know that we need to continue to support Ukraine. They need – they rely on this assistance. They rely on it to continue to fight what is a brutal Russian assault that continues, even over the – that continues every day. And so it’s important for Congress to act to continue to fund this democracy that is continuing to defend itself."
That is all about pushing Congress to act.  Inside DC baseball, not a US intent to cut off all funding.
As to current state of the war:
"QUESTION: And would you say that, given the latest developments, that the war is turning in Russia’s favor?
MR MILLER: No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I think people forget oftentimes the actual stakes of this war and what Vladimir Putin’s actual goal was, and what Ukraine has actually achieved and what it continues to achieve. Remember that Putin launched this as a war of total conquest where he wanted to take over Ukraine. He wanted to throw the government out of power. He wanted to subsume Ukraine inside Russia. Not only was Ukraine able to prevent that from happening, which everyone sort of takes for granted now but it was very not – it was very much not a settled question at the start of this war – they have managed to retake around half of the territory that Russia seized in the opening weeks of the war.
And even in the past few weeks, they continue to make battlefield gains. Remember the – over the last summer we were talking about the difficulty when Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and it looked like Ukraine wasn’t going to be able to continue to export grain. Well, because of advances that Ukraine made to open a Black Sea lane and expel the Russian fleet from certain parts of the Black Sea, they are now able to continue to export grain, which is critical to their economy.
So there are going to be battlefield developments back and forth, where you see each side gaining or losing territory. But when you look at the ultimate stakes of this war, it’s quite clear that Ukraine is going to exit this war independent, strong, with an improved economy, and looking west when what Russia wanted at the outset was not just a Ukraine that was looking east but Ukraine that was actually part of Russia."
Boy this sounds familiar...because some on this thread have been saying it all along.
And as to the statement that has some people running around like the panicky idiot in a bad plane crash movie:
"QUESTION: As long as it takes?
MR MILLER: As long as it takes. That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023. We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine – to use the language that you repeated back – to stand on its own feet and to help Ukraine build its own industrial base and its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own. But we are not there yet, and that is why it is so critical that Congress pass the supplemental funding bill, because we are not yet at the point where Ukraine can defend itself just based on its own. And it’s why that it continues to be important for Congress to support Ukraine and continues to be important for our European allies and others throughout the world to support Ukraine."
From a State Dept talking head no less.
Oh, ya that totally says that "Ukraine is totally cut off and will have to build its own tanks from here on out."  You know we should totally freak out now and point to every Russian leg twitch as a major victory, while screaming "Ukraine is doomed!!" From the heights of the thread.
So "yes" I am saying the US will backstop a Ukrainian MIC as it plans for a transition away from tactical handouts to long term strategic sustainment...just like they did in South Korea.  But hey you wanna be "soundbite panic guy" on the thread, go right ahead.  
 

Chelyabinsk most famous for the large meteor back in 2013 injuring over a thousand people with an explosive yield of half a megaton.
 

Shocking….considering you were likely walking thru a Haitian neighborhood.
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/9018-ct16_TOR_EthnicOrigin_Haitian.pdf

They did that add a year ago. Truly maximum cringe...

Ok, lets put all the rest of that uncited nonsense to the side.  I mean your theory of us "pushing" Ukraine into this war is frankly breathtakingly obtuse and directly from the red-hat camp.  I mean after this you can go back to whatever conspiracy websites you call home.
But let's just pull on this one singular thread.  So for once, I am calling on you...the kevinkin replacement we seem to get in various versions on this forum to actually prove your point beyond your own keyboard.  You state opinion like it was fact and frankly are spewing pro-Putin lines as though they are gospel.
"How is Ukraine losing this war?"  "How is Russia winning it?"  Feel free cite MacGregor.  Your position is that Ukraine has somehow "lost" by not achieving goals set out in the Summer '23 offensive.  What were those goals?  How do those goals determine the outcome of the war?
The Ukrainian military has already won this war.  Unlike whatever HBO/Hollywood narratives you subscribe to, wars rarely end in totals.  Victory parades and Johnny marching home.  The end somewhere in the middle.  In this case we have outlined repeatedly how Russia totally failed to achieve both their stated strategic objectives, and their most likely true ones.  Ukraine has achieved it major strategic objective...it still exists and is able to resist.  It retook roughly the same area of land as the size of freakin Ireland from what was supposed to be the second largest army in the world.
The Russian military is in tatters.  Blown all to hell.  They are still twitching but until I see an actual RA offensive that does not look like glorified leg humping, they are basically only good for holding the line.  NATO got Finland and will get Sweden.  Ukraine is in talks to join the EU.
So basically the Macgregor crowd - of which I am placing you - are now crowing because the UA was unable to re-take back those last few acres of the strategic corridor.  That is not only incredibly sh#tty given the loses they took in that effort, it is desperately trying to rejuvenate a broken narrative.  This war could freeze right where it is.  Ukraine could become like Korea, split.  And history will judge this a major Ukrainian victory.  
Actually, change that.  Don't even bother to try and prove your point because I already know what you are going to say- I have heard it a dozen times over now.  "Ukraine lost (yay!), we were right all along about US isolationism and the world will be such a better place if we stayed out of it altogether.  Oh and look who is blocking funding to Ukraine to keep them in the fight and then blaming everyone else because 'they are losing the war'"
Ok, we are done here...ignore.  

So the only provocative action a nation state can do is post nuclear weapons?  That is a straw man if there ever was one.
And here is a question for you - why should the fear and intimidation go one way?  Is Russia willing to be incinerated over Finland?  Are they hooked into some secret drug that makes deterrence impossible?  Seriously, this Everyone Else Powerful We are Weak is starting to sound awfully political….certain specific political.

This sounds a lot like the Russian narrative, that Ukraine is just a US/NATO puppet. But we know this is a lie, Ukrainians can do whatever they wish, it is not like we can forbid them.
The real point is that the same is true for us. We support Ukraine entirely by choice, not because we have to. What's more, unlike Russia or China, we don't have dictators who can just spend money any way they see fit. Our governments have to justify giving money to Ukraine instead of spending it in their respective country (Germany is currently deep in a budget crisis and aid for Ukraine was among the very few points that were not under scrutiny). That works because it is not orcs fighting orcs but good guys defending against bad guys.
I totally get the frustration but on the other side I think all the negativity about Western support is unwarranted. In less than 2 years the West pledged well beyond 100 billion € for supporting a country that we are not allied with. And that number does not include costs for harbouring refugees or costs related to sanctions. All while still having to manage the aftermath of the pandemic and fighting climate change. Yes, we could have done better but we could also have done a lot worse.

Ok, so go ahead then. Fight like orcs.
What will you do? Shoot prisoners on sight? Torture them? Use human shields to advance (if that's what the video actually shows)?. Force young Ukrainian men to advance into minefields at gunpoint? Fire (more) drones at Moscow? Go to a Russian town to rape women? Steal toilets and washing machines?
How will any of that help you win this war?
 

Just call this what it is…flat out racism.  I mean it boils down to white versus brown/black(sigh).  A quick internet search shows that “Muslim hordes” in Europe constitute about 5% of the population and may grow to a Christmas-killing 8% by 2030.  Meanwhile European demographics are cratering - and we point fingers at China (insert rolly eyes).
But we all know they will marry all our (white) women and steal our jobs (the ones we cannot fill anyway).  
What is truly baffling is the level of complete inability to see that this position leads directly to “so we are spending billions to keep Ukraine racially pure…wait, what?”  Seriously guys from Ukraine, have a freakin meeting or something.  So far we have had bleak defeatism, shaming-guilt,  fear mongering and now outright racism.  I know things are bad but how is any of this going to make things better?
 

Please let it go Haiduk.  This isn't really pushing forward the subject of the thread and is having the opposite affect than I think you would want.

To claim that multiculturalism is "Babylon" is a universal precursor to every version of fascist authoritarianism and the idea that cultural change via immigration destroys nations runs up against the obvious example of America as a superpower. Your approach to this subject is flat out Putinist.  
 

Exactly. This is a war about civilizational values. If you want to kill support for Ukraine, sound like the Russians. 

And the quite confident statements about the impossibility of integration and synergy from folks who clearly haven't a clue about...oh I don't know....American immigration history for instance are an excellent way to chill support from exactly the kind of folks who support Ukraine most vociferously.