Vet 0369
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Posts posted by Vet 0369
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20 hours ago, acrashb said:
That is the most important part; once momentum builds in the right direction the change of opinion is no longer linear in time and will explode exponentially. The loss of Lyman counters / neutralizes the Putin / Russian narrative they attempted through annexation and will accelerate the reduction in war support. Near-term future losses - Kherson pocket? - will, I think, seal the deal.
Then it's rebellion in multiple layers of Russian society.Ritter: multi-time sex offender and now sock puppet / asset for Russia.
"These leaders [Putin's position where he is an authoritarian but not absolute leader], Goemans found, would be tempted to “gamble for resurrection,” to continue prosecuting the war, often at greater and greater intensity, because anything short of victory could mean their own exile or death."
A comfortable exile in China is the best possible outcome now, as so many other doors have been closed. Based on Putin's ego and Goemans' research, I don't think he'll take it.
So things will grind on.Putin won’t got go to Beijing, he too afraid of getting CIVID 19.
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Sorry folks, try as I might I can’ delete those miskeyed posts what I wanted to say was:
LOL , “Airplane,” one of my most favorite movies of all time! I worked for the FAA for 20 years.
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16 hours ago, Butschi said:
Everything after the "but" is true but the legal aspect is not that simple. Like Japan, our constitution allows using the Bundeswehr only in defense. However it also allows Germany to enter alliances for mutual security. So we can also defend our partners. And because of that our supreme court has ruled that we can also take part in other missions of these alliances because it would not work to just gain all the benefits without the duties involved. That allowed the Bundeswehr to deploy in Yugoslavia, for instance. But these kinds of missions cannot be decided by the government alone but have to be decided in parliament. Still, this whole business is somewhat of a grey area and many legal experts say the constiution needs to be changed to have this on a firm basis.
@Butschi, thank you for that info. I thought that might be the case since Marshall was Chief of Staff to the U.S. Army, and McArthur reported to him, that would have been a unified position of the U.S. Government For the reconstruction of both countries.
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On 9/27/2022 at 3:58 PM, Aragorn2002 said:
The pro-Russian and anti-Europe course of that particular person has played an important role in the growing aggression of Putin and perhaps even in the German attempt to appease Russia.
Before Biden appeared few Europeans considered the US an ally anymore. So blame Germany/ Europe all you like, people, but the US is most to blame for the war in Ukraine.
OK, one political statement here and I don’t make any others on this vein.
I’m a Moderate Republican (original ideology of strong Federal Government, weak State Government), and I couldn’t, and still can’t stand the Jackass Trump. I felt his speeches were straight out of “Mein Kampf.” However, this war wasn’t because of his policies. I actually agree with his threat to the “free-loaders” in NATO to start paying their fair share commitments or he’d pull the U.S. out of NATO. That didn’t cause the war.
In 2014, when “the little green men” from Russia invaded Crimea, and the “vacationers from Russia” helped the Separs, Obama didn’t want to deal with the invasion, despite our treaty that required the U.S. to protect Ukraine from a foreign invasion, so he assigned the portfolio to Biden to handle. Biden did NOTHING, so as far as I’m concerned, this war results from the messages that The Obama Administration (failure to adhere to our treaty commitments), AND the message sent by the European NATO members that failed to live up to their commitments to NATO!
TLDR there is more than enough blame to go around, so how about stop with the childish “I know I did, but so did you” BS. No one can change the past, so everyone has to strive to learn from it and change themselves so they don’t repeat it.
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10 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Why did we not act quicker in Yugoslavia then? It's not only about military spending but about culture. The losing countries of WW2 have big cultural taboos about using their armies abroad. Germany and Japan were to never become threats to others again.
Japan has a prohibition of using their Self-Defense Forces outside of their country in their Constitution. Does Germany, France, or any of the other EU members have a same or similar one in any of their Constitutions or Charters?
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21 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
Apologies if I’m late to the dance on this one, I’ve been giving my old eyes a rest break and am now trying to catch up. If this is true, it’s great news! If he’s a Russian citizen, he can be mobilized and sent to the front! Nobody likes a Turncoat.
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18 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
There are guardrails on what the "opponents" say on these shows, but it seems they are widening. You could not say "war", you could not even hint that Russia was being defeated, you definitely couldn't acknowledge that Ukraine exists. Three things that this guy had no problems saying.
The problem with Putin's pressure relief system is that it's been allowing less relief and more pressure for some time now. While it is impossible to say what exactly is going on, there seems to be a change and it definitely isn't something we saw earlier in the war.
Steve
I expect they are preparing the RU population for full mobilization. Historically, Russia has needed a “major” threat to Mother Russia to convince the general population to give their full support to the regime.
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17 hours ago, Fenris said:
Hey look... A tank with supporting infantry, that's new
Nope, that’s backwards. The video shows Infantry with a tank supporting them, which is exactly what the tank was originally conceived for!
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6 hours ago, akd said:
Muscovites celebrate the liberation of Kharkiv Oblast:
Did Ukraine blow up an ammo dump in Moscow too? Looks just likes the ones in Ukraine!
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On 9/2/2022 at 9:39 AM, Butschi said:
I'd say integrate not assimilate. You are not required to lose your identity and culture but accept that your new host country has a different culture and adept to that.
Well, easier said than done and double standards are a thing here, too. I mean, I live near Stuttgart, Germany, and look at all the stuff for the US military here. I think it is perfectly possible to live here without ever getting into contact with German society. Not that I'd blame anyone, I'm from the Rhineland and after 10 years I'm quite certain the Swabians don't want me to integrate and I don't really want either.
Also beer from Stuttgart sucks, give me Kölsch, thank you very much.
Perhaps it’s because the U.S. is a country of immigrants (literally, everyone came here from somewhere else, even the “Native Americans” came from somewhere else with each wave conquering, assimilating, or exterminating the existing tribes), that in my view, we have far fewer of the “you don’t belong here, go back to your country” issues. Yes, there are the same diehard racists as any other country, just fewer.
Case in point; today, a Labor Day fundraising event was held in Boston, Massachusetts (a city infamous for “No Irish need apply signs” posted on businesses during the 19th century) to raise money to help Ukrainian refugees resettle here. It was a joint event sponsored by the Communities of Ukrainian Immigrants AND Russian Immigrants, so as far as I’m concerned, all of the “The only good Russian is a dead Russian, kick them all out” in this thread is nothing more than Racist BS, and throughly disgusts me! Yes, the US has it’s own issues with the same garbage in the political circles, but at least we recognize it for the racism that it is, and try to deal with it.
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46 minutes ago, Huba said:
Wonder if they had bayonets done? Terrifying indeed.
A good friend of mine was part of a USMC M60 machine gun team in Viet Nam. He told me of an assault on a tree line they made across a rice paddy. By the time he reached the tree line, three-quarters of the gun team were down, and he was the last one left. In the tree line, the fighting was hand-to-hand. They were so close, that when he threw a grenade from his prone position, the NVA soldier pushed it back. I didn’t press him any further (I never asked him direct questions, just let him tell me what he was comfortable with telling me).
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On 8/24/2022 at 1:46 PM, Battlefront.com said:
Yup. The amount of resources that go into protecting that tank could go towards something better. The more resources that are needed, the more likely it is that there's a better investment elsewhere. Failing to understand the point of diminishing returns on a particular concept leads to "brilliant" ideas like this:
I believe that the issue with modern armor is “mission creep.” Armor was always envisioned as support for the Infantry, but IMHO, the Generals who employed the armored units fell into the “political” trap of wanting to expand their “empires” by claiming that Armor is crucial to the attack so they could increase the size of their force and have more influence in Headquarters. Folks have referenced Patton’s Third Army was Infantry centric with Armor supporting the Infantry attack. Armor was used like the flamethrower teams, identify a need, follow a cleared path, get out of harms way when the identified threat was reduced. Patton was a Cavalry officer, so he always highlighted his “Cavalry units (I.e. armor) over the Infantry, so it gave an inaccurate picture of the 3rd Army’s actual battle record. Use Armor as it was originally conceived to support the Infantry mission by reducing enemy strong points and providing protection for the infantryman from one enemy “Cavalry,” and you won’t be losing all those expensive toys.
Compare the historical uses of Armor by the U.S. Army and the USMC. To the best of my knowledge, the USMC never used armor to “lead” the attack, because they have no “tradition” of Cavalry.
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On 8/24/2022 at 1:06 PM, Huba said:
And on top of that Boris Johnson who was in Kyiv today promised:
Edit: this supposedly included loitering munitions as well, with purely recon drones count at 500.
And for some hilarious trolling, UA hacked some radio stations in Crimea today, blasting Ukrainian patriotic sounds. Looks on the people faces are really telling - some are confused or outright scared, but many smile:
Excellent! The video also seems to highlight that the population is under constant surveillance since the speakers seem to have video cameras, unless someone stuck up a hybrid camera/speaker.
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18 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Good view of the Ukrainian side of the early fighting at Hostomel. Good first person account of a group that primarily acted as spotters for distant artillery.
This video is prime evidence why Infantry will always be needed. This man is a GRUNT!!!
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21 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Well, imagine where there is no rider at all and instead the vehicle is "manned" by a driver, a navigator, a weapons operator, and a commander sitting 1000 miles away in an air conditioned shopping mall. Logistics for the crew? Meal cards for the food court, free bathrooms, and a parking lot where they can safely drive back to a base housing that will never get attacked.
That is the future. Or I should say near future. It's coming very soon.
Steve
P.S. if this is an American op there would be a lawyer added to the crew.
P.P.S. there would also be a lot more women as no problem with combat roles.
P.P.P.S. as long as the crew can get to the control room on time, the 25% of the population that is too fat and out of shape to get into the armed forces is now available for recruitment.
P.P.P.P.S. no problem having 60 - 70 year olds onboard either as typical age problems aren't relevant. Can have dialysis or hip replacements without affecting operational tempo.
P.P.P.P.P.S. if you think I'm being snarky... you're wrong.
Unfortunately, you’ll still need the Grunt. Whatever tech humans can create can and will be defeated by opposing humans, ensuring that you’ll always need the Grunts to go in and dig them out after the Techies” disable or destroy the defensive tech.
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43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
My point is that if you focus on a subset of tactical engagements without looking at the other aspects of the war, then yup... drones + artillery seems to be far more important than infantry. While I agree that drones + artillery are a MASSIVELY important part of this battle, I'd take more infantry over more of that any day. I'm sure the Russians would too. Fortunately, they don't have them available.
This! It really doesn’t matter what your other assets are, be they armor, artillery, air, drone, or space based surveillance, eventually, “someone” has to go in and dig the enemy out of their positions. That “someone” is the Grunt. Even if the position is identified by aerial or space surveillance and the armor or artillery reduce the position to rubble, or air drops a MOAB thermobaric bomb that kills everyone in the enemy position, it’s still the infantrymen who has to clear, occupy, and defend that position. All the others do are to make the infantryman’s job safer or easier (MOAB), or more difficult (arty reducing the position to rubble with fanatic defenders such as Azov). I’ve served in both the USMC Air Wing and the Infantry, and know the strengths and weaknesses of both. I’d also take more infantry in a heartbeat.
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5 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Someone probably blew a blood vessel when this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache. Let alone whatever all this self loitering stuff is, or missile systems. Not sure there is much point to that service border anymore, but they tend to go on well past the point of sense.
This rivalry between services goes well beyond the bizarre. In the 1980s, a DOD plant representative where I worked asked me to help him develop a joint military specification for aircraft turbine engines (there were three specs at the time, one for each of the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force) that basically had different requirements for the same engines. The need developed from an issue with the same engine used on Navy and Air Force airplanes. The Air Force engines were developing corrosion on the turbine blades of the engines, but not the Navy engines. It turned out that the Navy spec required a corrosion preventative coating, that the Air Force choose not to incorporate in their spec because the AF engines weren’t going to be used at sea, but then the AF based aircraft on bases next to the sea and they corroded. The combined spec effort went nowhere because the Army and AF couldn’t even agree on an agenda or need. So much for having the Nation’s interests at heart.
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On 8/22/2022 at 11:22 AM, hcrof said:
Can someone from the "but if only they had good infantry camp" explain how infantry solves this problem? Honestly I can't understand how it is supposed to work.
For one thing, one of the main purposes of Infantry in a Combined Arms Attack is to clear and protect the flanks of the armor advance. These are not the days of the WWII Blitzkrieg armored spearpoint when the only infantry AT weapon was the anti-tank rifle. One opponent of mine in the CMx1 scenario “The Library” was stunned when I sent my Axis Infantry through the buildings on either side of the route of my Armor advance. Of course, that was where he had sited his AT Teams and my infantry wiped them out. Combined Arms Operation means everyone supporting each other.
When it comes right down to it, Armor, Artillery, and Air exist for one and only one purpose, to support the mission of the Infantry!
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On 8/21/2022 at 3:37 PM, MikeyD said:
You can bomb and straff things with A-10s in CMCW, which is set more than 40 years ago (halfway between now and WWII). I recall at the time congress mandated the Pentagon conduct tests to see if the old WWII P51 Mustang was still a viable ground attack platform (it wasn't). Nostalgia over the 'mystique' of certain aircraft often outlive the aircraft themselves.
The P-51 (Air Force designation F-51)Mustang was never a very effective ground attack platform because of it’s liquid-cooled engine and radiator on the bottom of the airplane that made it very vulnerable to ground fire. That’s one of the primary reasons the “Jug” (P-47) was developed by the USAAF for ground attack duties. Unfortunately, Air Force conception was “shining knights of the air in their powerful metal steeds clearing the skies of opposition!” That’s one of the reasons why, along with costs to maintain the P-47, the newly created Air Force scrapped all the P-47s and used F-51s for ground attack in the Korean Conflict, where they sucked because of their vulnerability to ground fire. Inter-service rivalries exist to this day.
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On 8/21/2022 at 1:28 PM, Letter from Prague said:
I heard USAF don't want to retire A-10 because then the Army might get them, and they don't want Army to operate fixed wing combat aircraft.
The U.S.Army/U.S. Air Force “Key West Accord of 1947” prohibits the Army from having “armed aircraft.” In fact there was a “major fervor” when the Army put door gunners on helicopters. In the view of the Air Force, even that was forbidden by the Accord. I doubt that there was ever any serious consideration of transferring the A-10s to the Army.
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23 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Yeah, I know this isn't how Russians think and there's no way they will any time soon. Their critical thinking has been conditioned to be in the "off" position to a much larger extent than in Western countries. It's going to take a couple of generations of better leadership to change that. Hopefully the start time for it isn't that far off.
Steve
I’m sorry Steve, I usually agree with your historical insights, but as an Historian myself, I don’t agree with this assessment. The majority of Russian population was emancipated from Serfdom (basically slavery bound to the land with no more “rights than other chattel such as livestock) just 160 years ago by Tsar Alexander II, as the last of the “European” countries to ban Serfdom. Just over 50 years later, they effectively became “chattel” again under Lenin until just 32 years-ago when the Soviet Union dissolved . How long in total have the majority of the Russian populations, with the exception of the “intelligencia” and criminals been allowed to practice free-thought and free-speech without fear of punishment by those who rule them? I contend that the Russian people are so ingrained psychologically to think and act as the Serfs they have been for literally thousands of years that we can’t compare the majority of Russian people to those of the U.S. Even the existing Western Democracies such as The UK, France, Germany, and others that had Serfdom are much more inclined psychologically to accept decisions of their leaders than those troublemaking “Yankees!” (Notice I didn’t say “Americans” or “North Americans” as I consider all residents of the Continents of North and South America to be “Americans.”)
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55 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
None of this changes the strategic impact of this single attack. Making a decision to pretend nothing happened and hope for the best is still a strategic decision. Because if Ukraine has more of these to use, then Russia is doing nothing to cope with them. If Ukraine never launches an attack again, the RU Nats will likely not return to the same tunes they were singing yesterday. And what they say carries weight. In fact, Grigb just posted something that suggests that ignoring the strike is already having some detrimental effect on the hardcore nationalists.
Steve
Strategically, I’d place the attack on the airbase in Crimea on the same level as the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo!
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14 hours ago, dan/california said:
There are a lot of analogies with Guadalcanal. Bear with me on this. The Japanese eventually lost because their resupply was gradually choked down over a period of months. Some weeks they got more, some weeks they got less, but on average they didn't get enough to maintain a force that could stand up to the Marines. Even though the Marines had no shortage of problems themselves. In the end the U.S. won the logistics battle, and in an attritional fight that is really the only one that matters. And to put to mildly the Russians are less motivated than the Japanese.
It needs to be stated here that the Marines were on Guadalcanal for only about six months (August, 1942 to February, 1943). The Marines completed their basic mission “To seize and secure advanced Naval bases,” and turned over the remaining persecution of the Campaign to the U.S. Army and National Guard units, so effectively, while the Marines made the initial shock force assaults, the Army and National Guard completed it.
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4 minutes ago, paxromana said:
Yes, 81,mm vsd 82mm - 1 mm difference. But as fart as I understand it the 120mm Mortars are exactly the same calibre.
That is likely true. As I said, I spoke from my experience as a Company Weapons Section Leader in the USMC in the 1970s. The biggest tubes we had were 81s. The Army had the 120s and IIRC, Four-Duces that were originally developed post-WWI Chemical weapons.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Not surprising at all. During the U.S. /England War of 1812, when the U.S. residents of Calis (sp?), Maine, U.S.A. didn’t have gun powder to make fireworks for celebrating the U.S. Independence Day celebrations, so the residents of St. Johnsbury, New Brunswick, Canada gave them some of their stock. Obviously the residents of both didn’t let a little thing like a war between their nations screw up their relationship.