Vet 0369
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Posts posted by Vet 0369
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11 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
I didn't want to start going over all the different interpretations of the wars in the Middle East, especially since I know some people here on these forums have been actively fighting there.
But yes, there are many different ways of looking at those wars, and that was my point - when the survey asked "Would you be willing to fight for your country", then Ukrainians and people in Western Europe will think of very different ways of fighting for their country.
Much of the value of the data from polls is directly related to the exact what and how the questions are written/asked. They can be manipulated in many different ways to elicit the answers the pollsters want for their points.
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18 hours ago, kevinkin said:
Same as Seals. Why would Seals operate in mountainous terrain? It comes down to marketing and drawing young people toward a specific service regardless of the name of the service in some instances. In a country the size of the US, we will find those that just want the challenge to be a Seal, a marine, a fighter pilot, a tank leader. It almost makes you think why do all these services exist in the first place given there is so much overlap? Tradition I suppose. Each service is its own kingdom. I like it that way as long as they fight as a well oiled team.
“In the Beginning,” the Continental Army was basically created when Washington took command of the Massachusetts Militia on June 14, 1775, after the fiasco of Breed’s Hill (misnamed Bunker Hill). At that time, the Militia had enough powder and ball to fight a 3-minute fixed battle with the Regulars in Boston.
the Continental Marines were created on November 10, 1775, were modeled on the Royal Marines, and created as “Soldiers of the Sea” primarily to act as snipers in the rigging, to provide defense for landing parties, and to prevent mutiny on the ship. The Continental Army at Boston didn’t get any additional ammunition until the Continental Marines took the fort on New Providence Island in January 1776.
During, and after the Civil War, in addition to sniping and landing party work, manned the ship guns which created the rank of Gunnery Sergeant.
After the positive publicity on the performance of Marines in WWI, and particularly their Pacific successes in WWII, the Army actively began politicking to combine the Marine Corps into Army to get a larger share to the reduced funding. At the same time, the newly spun off U.S. Air Force tried to get the U.S.Navy aircraft carrier program cancelled by claiming that their strategic bombers with the Atomic Bomb made the carriers obsolete. It almost happened, but than God it didn’t because when North Korea invaded and rolled up the U.S and South Korean Armies all the way down to Pusan due to TO&E blunders and outdated thinking by the U.S.Army brass, the only thing that prevented collapse of the Pusan Perimeter was the Navy’s ability to deliver supplies, equipment, and most importantly, the U.S. Marine Rapid Deployment Force AND the Navy and Marine Close Combat air support that they had honed to a Razor’s edge during WWII.
Even after the debacle of the Korean Conflict, the Army and Air Force continually try to cut the funding, and absorb the Marine Corps into the Army.
All four services serve uniquely different functions and missions, but the antics of the Army brass and former Army Air Corps have done nothing but create dissension and trouble for more than a Century.
End of rant.
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3 hours ago, Fenris said:
Long interview with two former US servicemen now in southern Ukraine. They discuss lots of things, I'm about half way through and so far they've talked about river operations near Kherson, the UKR offensive, building an NCO corps.
Thank you very much for this YouTube vid! Very enlightening. I particularly liked the assessment that folks who complain the counteroffensive is moving too slowly are idiots. Also, right near the end, the Marine’s answer to the “funniest” thing they’ve encountered during their training classes when he recounted how one of the three of them who spoke English went right instead of left, and said the easiest thing for that person to do was to learn Ukrainian for “Left.” Just like our previous thread on the languages.
Fortunately, both are diplomatic enough to not reveal how annoyed they might be to be referred to as “Soldiers!”
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2 hours ago, hcrof said:
Thanks, Ukrainian villages all have the same names and it is very confusing when people expect you to know which of the 5 identically named places they are talking about!
LOL, here in the U.S. we have many towns and cities all over the country that have identical names of others in other States and even in the same state (much more rare). To compound the confusion, we have any that are also in other countries, especially in the Northeastern “New England” region and in the Midwest which have a high proportion of Northern and Eastern European immigrants. Why, in Maine, we even have one of Steve’s favorite names, Moscow.
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10 hours ago, Kinophile said:
Not in any scale that suggests an amphibious assault on Crimea, (cough air/sea supremacy cough) so likely riverine focussed.
It’s a matter of scale. Marines, both U.S. and UK, don’t generally conduct “large-scale invasion” types of operations. They generally conduct small-scale raid style operations due to the size Corps. Granted. Since WW II, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, have used the USMC incorrectly as the same as Army Infantry in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.so many who knew only those conflicts have a distorted idea of how Marines in general are used. They have always been associated with landings to secure beachheads for the Army Infantry or in raids to force the enemy to redeploy its own forces. If the Royal or U.S. Marines were training UKR Army infantry (I didn’t read the post, so don’t know who was being trained) then I would begin to suspect an Amphibious assault on Crimea.
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2 hours ago, Haiduk said:
Damaged by UKR drone SIG tanker. You can see a hole in the hull
Ah ha! I just determined the cause of all those “careless smoking incidents.” The “NO SMOKING”signs are in English, not Russian!
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16 hours ago, Kinophile said:
Such an Engineer type of post.
So cute, in confusing not-cute way.
Question: How can you tell an extroverted Engineer from an introverted Engineer?
Answer: An extroverted Engineer stares at “your” shoes when talking to you!
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On 8/8/2023 at 11:54 PM, Battlefront.com said:
I hate lobster almost as much as I hate having to wade through repeated instances of feather ruffling over something that adds nothing of value to this thread.
Steve
LOL! We share that dislike of lobster. After my sister and I had polio in 1955, our Father worked two jobs just to pay the medical bills. He also had a small boat and some lobster pots, so we ate lobster all the time. My Mother told me that one time I came home from elementary school and asked “why do I have to have lobster sandwiches all the time, why can’t I have peanut butter and jelly like the the other kids?” I will eat it, but only if I’m a guest and someone serves it to me.
Massachusetts actually had a law that prisoners and servants couldn’t be fed lobsters more than a certain number of times per week!
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12 hours ago, kevinkin said:
Training and more training until the unit is full of potential energy and fired like cannon into the enemy. The unit sees the the horrors or war and those that survive think they are either lucky, really good, blessed by God or a combination of those. To reassemble said unit then add in replacements and assume the survivors will not be cocky goes against human nature. I think the Band of Brothers has several scenes related to this. But what is in human nature that produces that cockiness. Individualism. What militaries do is take the best foot soldiers and promote them after heavy action. For good reason - that way they tow the company line with a higher shield of authority over the replacements. But some can't take the difference between squad and company leader. They just rather return to the familiarity of how they survived. It's sort of simple: no one who has little experienced in what I went through is going to train me. Ukraine does not have the luxury to let combat vets completely reset and come back with an open mind.
I must take exception to most of this. It just isn’t true except in an extremely small number of circumstances. Most of the issues with replacements isn’t that they are not trained or inexperienced, but that most units train as a unit and are very familiar with how each operates. Replacements are new members of the unit, and as such are “unknowns.” It is a matter of “trust.” The reason the WW2 “vets” appeared to “shun” replacements is much more related to the the causality rate of the replacements themselves. Almost no one wanted to “get to know” or “befriend” a replacement who was likely to become a major casualty in the next fight and be gone. After surviving the first fight, the replacement had shown that he had either the “luck” or “skill” to survive and was accepted.
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19 hours ago, sburke said:
fancy big cities? and why does Musk need to be nice to Russia?
Because he’s South African?
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On 8/5/2023 at 6:13 AM, Haiduk said:
When first modern western armor became to arrive in Ukraine, I've read some indignant posts of "veterane brigades" representatives, why Bradleys got 47th, which "sit on their asses on Belarusian border, when we barely hold the enemy on donated techniclas"
I wonder, who on Kofman's opinion had to hold frontline, when veteran brigades would be leave Ukraine for training on western vehicles? They gave opportunity to train several other brigades instead. Also what he meant under "veteran brigades"? The same 47th brigade has many brigade level commanders transferred from 93rd brigade. Also, there are problem with many veterans, especialy who fought long time in ATO - they have "old warrior" complex and they have a problems to learn new features. About this wrote Roman Donik, UKR volunteer, who established the center of intensive effective training for infantrimen and squad leaders. He told many of "olds" , arriving to the center believed initially their survival under fire and intuition experience is better than field manual tatic instructions. And not all of them could finish the course and some of them were dropped out. Also German instructors told sometime experienced UKR soldiers don't want to listen them and enter to the disputes (though, after "you should bypass minefield" I not wonder). So, in some aspect will be better to teach a soldier from "zero level civilian", then re-train "old" servicemen.
This attitude is not surprising at all, and has probably occurred for millennia. My Father. Who was also a Marine told me that when the MarineCorps 5th Division was formed, and Veterans from the battle for Guadalcanal were transferred in as a core group, most of them would find ways to get out of training for the “next” operation because they were already highly experienced at jungle war fair. Unfortunately for them, the training was for a relatively barren island named Iwo Jima! Many died because of the skipped training since it wasn’t the jungle fight they knew.
s.
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1 hour ago, sburke said:
LOL I'm envisioning the Marine booklet...
Can I buy you a drink
Do you live far from here
etc etc
LOL, actually, the typical Norwegian can speak English better than most native speakers. Fun fact, Norway and Japan require English language classes from the first grade to secondary school for all students. All Airline Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers are required to use English to communicate. France once tried to require pilots in French airspace to use French instead of English. The International Aviation Community put a stop to that attempt real fast!
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4 hours ago, beardiebloke said:
Did you mean that the big light "behind" the ship was the moon? It looks like three very bright light sources on the ship as the drone gets closer. Even without a full-ish moon the coastline appears so well lit up that this looks like a hard target to miss. If those ship lights were there to help spot drones ... well, not very effective without an alert watch. Light pollution isn't only bad for astronomers. With all the GPS etc I imagine old skool blackout curtains and light curfew doesn't happen anymore.
It could also be infrared sensors on the drone picking up the hot exhaust from the stacks.
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4 hours ago, poesel said:
That was not my point. Inside the IL English should be standard and I guess it de facto is.
But what happens if you need to talk to someone outside the IL? Some Ukrainian yokel (sorry) who has never spoken a word of English? Or, even if he has - what are the chances he learned military or medical slang in high school?
My point is that if you go to a foreign country to fight, you ought to learn the ****ing language - at least the very basics. For your own sake.
I have nothing more to add.I don’t “know” if the U.S. military still does this, but I suspect they do. When my Marine infantry Battalion was sent to Norway for two weeks as part of NATO Operation Teamwork in 1976 or 1977, we were given booklets with simpler Norwegian phrases so we could communicate on a basic level.
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21 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
Not really true, I met some who could talk Tagalog, Spanish was common in San Diego when I was there. Elvis Presley made a fair effort to sing in German.
As I said, it’s an old joke. With the explosion of multinational cultures in the U.S., it is even less true now than it used to be. I myself read, write, and speak Spanish on an elementary scale, had French in classes in Elementary School (grades 4 through 6), a year of German in Middle school, two years of Spanish in High School, and a smattering of Japanese when I was stationed in Japan for a year.
Plus, as a Marine, I can cuss in a number of languages.
I, for one, consider the joke, which I suspect to be European based, to be an insult.
My point was that too many judge based on heritage, unfortunately. It went flat.
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16 hours ago, poesel said:
Indeed, a harrowing video.
What I'm a bit surprised about is that the US soldier in the video, for all his professionalism as a soldier, seems not to be able to speak some basic Ukrainian. Words like 'wound', 'artillery', 'take', 'drive' etc... would have been tremendously helpful for him. A few words plus sign language gets you very far. Yet, he continues to speak English with the driver, who quite obviously doesn't understand a word of it.
An old joke (or possibly insult depending on your point of view) I sometimes use goes:
”What do you call a person who speaks two languages?” Answer: “Bilingual.”
”What do you call a person who speaks three or more languages?” Answer: “Multilingual.”
”what do you call a person who speaks one language?” Answer: “American.”
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4 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
I'm not sure about Ukrainian drone hitting a school would change much. The people who would be angry at Ukraine for it probably already don't support it. The people who want to see Russian blood would not complain.
...
In other news, various Czech newspapers started running articles about how the Ukrainian offensive is stalled, and it is unrealistic to expect a breakthrough. Some even talk about frozen conflict.
Is this the case elsewhere as well?
Media outlets are, for the most part, all “for profit” enterprises. That means the more controversies they can develop and present, the most profits they can make from their sales or commercials. I expect most outlets to be controversial or alarmist so they can generate more profits or support their owners political views. A very well known American writer and humorist once said “believe only half of what you hear and nothing of what you read!”
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12 hours ago, JonS said:
Unfortunately, money doesn’t just talk, it SCREAMS!
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23 minutes ago, dan/california said:
here has been a fair amount of evidence from this war that senior Russian flight officers fly MORE than their juniors, simply because the juniors have never gotten the flight hours to be competent.
Like this guy, he is a fat forty odd if he is a day, and the Russians had him flying combat missions until his number came up. My read is that they do this because once upon a time he went through a real training program that Russia is to broke, corrupt, and incompetent to run any more. In the U.S. a guy like this would naturally rotate out to some sort flight instructor position, probably as a contractor with that waist line. But that is because we HAVE real training programs.
As I said previously, “Not Necessarily,” which means that your statement might be accurate, but that it could also be “coincidence.” You are correct in the length of time it takes to train a pilot. For example, the initial flight training for fixed wing airplanes is about six months. I don’t know if rotorcraft pilots go through that initial fixed wing training, but the rotorcraft pilot goes through two years of training before being posted to a “combat capable” Squadron. That is why I say it is possible (also in my estimation probable) that the loss of the Col. was because of, but not necessarily due to lack qualified/trained pilots.
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15 hours ago, dan/california said:
Also a relatively small force of KA-52s is experiencing ongoing attrition, and and most of the direct combat losses seem to kill the pilots, too. That is why a full bird Colonel was flying a front line mission, there wasn't anybody half that competent left to send. Russia really is on the verge of a situation where it could run out nearly everything on some important piece of the line. And if Ukraine breaks out of the mine belts it will be hard to stop them.
Not necessarily true. I don’t know how the Russian Aviation operations are set up, but the U.S. Military’s aviation mission rotation includes ALL Flight Officers. Unlike in ground units where the Battalion Comanders tend to not be on the “front lines,” Aviation Officers are expected, in fact are required, to be part of the combat mission rotation. I suspect the combat rotation of aircrews in Russian Aviation are the same.
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5 hours ago, dan/california said:
https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1684794089659625472
Says 60 out of 500 man battalion left alive.
Perhaps the graft, theft, and incompetent maintenance isn’t unique to the Russian Army and Navy and aren’t limited to those Services? What does that say about their Strategic Missile and Nuke Service?
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3 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
Beaver drones, Shark drones, I am eagerly waiting for Polecat drones.
That will “stink!”
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On 7/24/2023 at 12:00 AM, kevinkin said:
Ok, I agree the nuke stuff is going nowhere. Maybe we can lighten the discussion up. Which war game (computer or board game) would best simulated the static combat we are observing in eastern Ukraine? And would those products shed light on the war and combat so we all can learn from past mistakes? I use Combat Mission and Command, but they are obvious choices. Sure many other gamers do as well.
For “cardboard counters,”(board game) Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) is still able to simulate the combat environment of Ukraine with the exception of guided weapons and ISR. For computer, Combat Mission of course. It’s no surprise to me that CM is my computer pick since when I first started playing CMx1 in the very early 21st Century, I remarked to my opponent that I could see the ASL underpinnings in the CM1 gameplay. In fact it appears to me that some of the third party missions in CMx1 and CMx2 are actually repackaged original ASL scenarios with some minor changes.
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2 hours ago, sburke said:
I don't consider it offensive so much as I am missing a portion of the Russian community looking for such an option. Personally, I'd love to see some portion of the Russian community looking to be a part of the international community. I just haven't seen it yet, at least not on terms of accepting genocide.
One of the main precepts of the USMC “Human Relations” training” after the U.S.. Army massacre at Mai Lai was that the primary drive for most of Humanity is food, shelter, and security, and that they don’t care who rules them as long as that “drive” is satisfied. I would venture to say that, IMHO, most of the world population fall into this category, especially the Russian population most of whom never made it out of “Serfdom”. No matter what the “ideology” claimed. It is very difficult to affect a regime change when the people who are being ruled pretty much don’t care who is ruling them.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
One thing that I think many on this Forum don’t realize is that talk is cheap, especially from “chicken hawks” as many of us here who HAVE served tend to call those who talk a tough fight, but have never been put in a position to have to back up their words with actions. The most honest answer when asked what one would do in a situation is, I’ve never been exposed to that situation so I honestly don’t know what I would, only what I would hope to do. Even a person who has been in a situation never knows, but can only hope to handle it as before. This is because one might be a hero when dry, warm, well-fed, and have dry feet, but be a coward when wet, cold, hungry, and be standing in mud up to their ankles.
we all think we can be a Rambo or a Florence Nightingale, but never know if we can until AFTER the situation is over! And the whole subject is WAY OFF TOPIC in this thread.