Pelican Pal

I've recently had it said to me that if Trump was still in power there would have been no war in Ukraine.  My view of that was that there would have been but it would probably all be over by now, and not in a good way.  Happy to be enlightened otherwise, or ignored if this is a bit too political for this place...

While its unfortunate it is occurring, I am under the impression, that Russia continuing to attack, and spending combat power on costly offensives is more beneficial to Ukraine in the long run than full shift to defense. As long as Ukraine does not wholly collapse, and is prepped for defensive fighting in depth, draining Russian combat power is vital for any future Ukrainian offensive no? 
Longer thread than just below. 
 
 

Yes, we want Germany to:
a) build an army
b) drive it through Poland to
c) fight Russians. 
I couldn't find the relevant Polandball comic, but you can imagine
Yes I see it, our government is an unfortunate incident ( that even more unfortunately got a second term..) It will change though, probably in next election, and hopefully there will be enough common ground to rebuild the relations then.
Anyway I held Germany to a higher standard, as the one country around which the whole EU more or less is centered. Nobody wants strong Germany in way Russia is strong, but strong as being able to make decisions and act with some vision? That would be great. I'm not doing German-bashing for the sake of it here, it is seriously distressing that the political center of EU looks to be helpless in face of the crisis.
The whole taking your money is another topic altogether as Germany is benefiting from how EU is arranged much more that it is investing in it (as are other countries, it's not a zero sum game). 

See, that's what the problem is with Germany's perceived position. You have every right to declare not doing anything or to squabble internally and in effect also do not do nothing. What Germany is not entitled to though is to demand that it's position is accepted and understood by the others ( including Ukraine). It isn't, it makes Germany look weak, indecisive, for sure not a political leader for anybody east of the Oder. It will be pointed out repeatedly by all interested parties, the price for doing what Germany does is losing face. The same of course goes for France, who also somehow expected to be a political leader of the EU and proves that it can't be expected to assume this role.

I meant to comment on this a few days ago... it is really hard to stay up-to-date with this thread. 😉
I'm no historian, just generally interested in this topic. I think you or the OpEd somewhat overestimate the impact the Nuremberg trials had on the general German population. I don't mean to diminish the importance of the trials. They were important in for the first time actually making the ruler of a country accountable for the crimes they commited. That was a powerful message to other rulers. They also made the crimes visible. However, they also allowed the common people to somewhat detach from all this. The top Nazis were convicted, the common people were rather superficially de-nazified and so the blame could be put on Hitler and his cronies who somehow demonically managed to seduce the people (which is still a theme that often repeated in many documentaries).
What's more, during the first few years, the Germans were much more busy generally surviving than facing their crimes. Afterwards, when the (West) German "Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle) kicked in, people didn't want to be bothered with the past and generally just didn't talk about the 3rd Reich. The reckoning came later when the following generation started asking what their parents had done.
Also, the indeed relatively thorough historical investigation of what happend during 1933-1945 alone did not make the Germans good democrats by itself. Apart from the fact that of course, the Allies did not actually give West Germany a choice, what really helped was that the people profited economically from being on this side of the Iron Curtain. They were actually better off after getting rid of the Nazis. The famous Marshall Plan, for instance, although by itself it had little real economic impact, the mere seeing everywhere "this was built with the help of the Marshall Plan" did a lot.
So, to get back on topic: I don't really think something akin to the Nuremberg trials would have changed that much after the fall of the Soviet Union. I guess that most Russians actually know the Soviet rulers weren't really nice guys. But in the end democracy and capitalism did not improve the lives of the common people. Putin did - whether by correlation or causation or just merely perception doesn't matter.

Maybe, as an afterthought: If we want to draw historical parallels... Maybe the more relevant part is how the Nazis came to power instead of how they ended. Democracy was weak during that time and politians cared more about there little power games than about the people. Then came the Great Depression which hit Germany extremely hard. Enter Hitler who blamed democracy and not only promissed improving the economic situation but actually did so after 1933 (again, it doesn't matter that he used plans drawn up by the previous administration and that Hitler could claim the effects the general recovery of the global economy had for himself).

I wish that were true.  But it's rand paul, senior senate f-ing snake.  Have you heard the garbage he's been spewing about Ukraine the last couple months?  he would have handed UKR to Putin on a silver platter.  He said that UKR was part of Russia so what's the problem.  And 44 million people and their descendants would lose their freedom, forever.  That's the stakes we're actually talking about.   RP doesn't give a flying f-k about the money.  He's one of Putin's like autocrat-wannabe waterboys.

Note, I was for the Afghanistan withdrawal for pretty much exactly those reasons. But it's really important to not apply a one-size-fits-all approach to strategic policy. Afghanistan/Iraq/etc were peripheral conflicts of choice. The outcome was never going to affect the global order or our preeminent place within it in any significant way. In fact, those conflicts oriented the US away from peer threats and more important theaters and so could cogently be argued to have actually weakened that order which we lead and from which we reap the benefits. 
Ukraine and the Russian invasion are not in any way peripheral. It's on the border of NATO, on the border of the EU and uncontested Russian taking and control of that space would have profound global effects. Not least of those effects would be the immediate collapse of the rule that European states cannot violently settle disputes or borders. So, I have some sympathy for your argument but it's simply not applicable on this central of a challenge.
P.S. I hope the above is not seen as political per se. It certainly is a very bipartisan position in DC at the moment.
 

Words fail me about this 'Crackpot'. The US divide on full display, just oppose because somebody can. This guy has been to university. Democracy when one person can stop a democratic decision?
 

Still, he got elected to the senate even as a presidential candidate one time. The next step of a democracy is to descend into anarchy. We will see some of it I am afraid. Last presidential election had the alarm bells up all over the world. Ukraine would be Russia today if it had gone the other way. 

Owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The destructive Rupert Murdoch - Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com)

Expansion of NATO in Europe also means that Europe will become less dependent on the US. The US already had a dissident president, and his supporters still support putin. I prefer the US to remain fully democratic, but I don't take them for granted. To call Kim of North Korea and putin great guys give me the shivers. Two nut regimes with enough bombs to wage a terror campaign on the world is unacceptable. One nut regime (Russia) is bad enough. The Democratic Party won't be here forever. The social democratic systems in Europe are called left liberals in the US. The Republican Party needs to regain trust. 

I'm going to take a minute before work to address this Twitter thread by Trent. I only caught the first part of his thread in my responses yesterday, and I think the rest of what he posted is a perfect example of him taking isolated situations and extrapolating them to create sexy scenarios for public consumption with little additional evidence. In this thread he takes examples of shell burst patterns to build this idea of Ukraine using a vast network of distributed, digital howitzers to shoot and scoot across the battlefield. The tactic is certainly feasible on paper - it's been around in doctrine since WW1, the US Army calls it a "roving gun" - but hardly unique to Ukraine. The AFATDS system and digital howitzers that we use are literally designed to facilitate this function. And while Ukraine may be using a digital system to route and process fire missions, but from what I've seen the vast majority of their howitzers (and definitely not the 122mm D-30s he references) lack the digital systems to make it truly effective to the extent he describes. Trent uses a lot of questionable assumption to build this idea of Ukrainian artillery supremacy that is honestly not backed by the data I'm seeing. If he has more sources to back his claims I would love to see them, because none of his thread passes the sniff test for this artillery officer.
Please don't take this as a slight on you Grey Fox or anyone who found Trent's thread interesting, this is just professionally frustrating to see someone the public "trusts" peddling such poorly sourced information in such a confident manner. Now I get to see his thread linked in every Reddit and Twitter thread featuring artillery, talking about something that is almost certainly not happening, at least not to the extent that Trent describes.

the General Forum just migrated here.

Maybe I'm missing something here but the removal of the tanks from the Tiergarten didn't literally happen? It looks like a number of cut together clips and then some editing as a sort of ad so I don't quite get why people have been arguing over it for 2-3 pages.

Maybe I'm missing something here but the removal of the tanks from the Tiergarten didn't literally happen? It looks like a number of cut together clips and then some editing as a sort of ad so I don't quite get why people have been arguing over it for 2-3 pages.

Maybe I'm missing something here but the removal of the tanks from the Tiergarten didn't literally happen? It looks like a number of cut together clips and then some editing as a sort of ad so I don't quite get why people have been arguing over it for 2-3 pages.

My take on why Putin waited is that maybe he wasn't quite ready, but thought he had lots of time, because Trump was undermining NATO unity, restricted aid to Ukraine, had aid to Ukraine stripped from the party platform, and Putin assumed Trump would be reelected so there was time.
Once that didn't happen, every day that passed made Ukraine more capable, and Biden repairing NATO links. Time suddenly was not on his side.
My take anyway, FWIW. Could be simpler. He just got a wild hair one day and told them to attack. 🙂
Dave

COVID and his cancer and his impending morality probably hit him during trump's period, likely he was counting on him being reelected and with that security for trump to undertake more chaos domestically and foreign policy wise, Putin would would do the same invasion only Biden got elected instead.
The unfortunate part about of this destruction of Russian imperialism and colonialism is that it could have been avoided had Russia been able to look inward and recognize the agency of her colonized and imperial ruled peoples and therefore with the reset of the fall of the Soviet Union undertake a more cooperative framework that may well have led to joining NATO and the EU in the future.
DMS really does not give much consideration to Ukrainians asking for agency or the Baltics, seems to consider the Russian sphere of influence to be the only important factor in the relations with Eastern Europe. Does he believe the bombings of Belgrade to be legitimate? Seems no, he seems to think the genocide of Kosovo is fake or maybe not a justification for the intervention of NATO.
Ultimately, accepting the genocide attempt occurred in Kosovo means accepting the bombing of Belgrade was legitimate, which means the attempted wiping of Ukraine by Russia is the same sort of action that brings about the bombing of Moscow.
I still want him to answer whether he thinks the rhetoric calling for the erasure of Ukrainian culture is justified, just overblown rhetoric or if he considers it a overstep.
^
If nothing else, the shock of Russia being defeated by Ukraine is going to hit Russians hard, NATO assistance regardless, DMS is right, it will be utterly humiliating. What Russia, many pro-Russians argue is that allowing the humiliation to take place is going to unleash even worse outcomes from Russia and the Russian people.
As others have stated, Russia is acting like a abusive ex-, trying their best to threaten and beat their partner back into their world.
This cannot occur anymore. I'm sorry but the West cannot let Russia brutalize it's former colonies to retain their sense of being.
Like many abusive people, part of the framework for their justification for their actions rests on being the victim, and being the maligned party.

The Soviets did get a lot of help from the USA and Britain so they could have an easier fight against the Germans. So why not share the celebrity with the US veterans?
And I don't know which of the Allies that killed most German civilians, but I think it was the US and British bomber squads. They did what actually were a war crime although they got away with it.
So maybe the Russians find that to be enough reason to have a US soldier on the banner now when they themselves are doing the same in Ukraine.

Have any of these supposedly intercepted phonecalls ever been confirmed independently? A lot of them are so completely over the top (like the one where a Russian Soldier's girlfriend gave him permission to rape Ukrainian women) that I have my doubts about how many of these are simply Ukrainian psyops.

Also I found it is a worthwhile tactic to fire at a tank when it is a strong tentative contact. Another plus when you have infantry riders on your tank. Their full contact becomes a tentative contact for the tank they are on. When you have the numbers like on Seelow it is worth to try it out yourself. 

To reiterate my original post the game gives you a dramatic buff to concealment. I ran 62 tests and in nearly half of those the hull down tank wasn't spotted. It also points to the importance for the attacker to do reconnaisance since getting spotting markers and sharing those via C2 can really narrow down the defenders hull down advantage.

 Hull down only provides a minor buff to hit chance but its not something I'd rely on.
 
CMBB and CMAK have a hull down command. Not sure about CMBO.


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I see the Hull Down command as being similar to the Assault command. You will get better results doing it manually but the command acts as a time saver if you don't want to commit even more of your life to CM. Playing against the AI I tend towards the command while in PVP I tend towards doing it manually.

I think once the AI calculates the hit it must hit the fighting compartment. All the other parts are behind hard cover. Also it is harder to get an LOS. I rarely use the Hull-Down myself. 

You say the same thing about the War in the Ukraine thread? 

Ah okay, I found info on the 126 when checking some bugs with the Syrian C2 network. There were 2-3 locations that describe the 126 as being used by the squad leader with a separate radio in the track for communication with the platoon leader. Tankograd is the easily findable english language site the others were in Russian and tracking those done was a pain. IIRC there were also mention of R-147 and R-147(P) although those are 1970s era.

@Simcoe

If you check out https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/field-disassembly-bmp-1.html you can see the layout for the BMP-1 and that visually emphasizes how the Soviets intended the vehicle to fight, imo. If you notice the SL isn't in the turret but behind the driver so he isn't in a great place to spot targets/guide shots in for the gunner anyway.

He doesn't have a great view to his right and if he is turned out the gunner cannot rotate the gun to the left without endangering him. Additionally in a hull down position the SL won't be able to see above the berm.

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Within CW I find the BMP-1 to be pretty unpleasant to fight against. It can give the M60s a run for its money in a lot of situations and combined with tanks can overpower a lot of yankee positions. E.G. 1-2 platoons of BMP-1 + a platoon of tanks is no 7-10 vehicles capable of killing armor.