panzersaurkrautwerfer

See, here's the thing. You didn't actually read what I posted. If you did, you'd see how silly you just looked. The most dangerous thing to Syrians is the Syrian government, or comes from Russia with love. You can cite individual atrocities, but if your contention is what your country is doing, and what Assad is doing is the less terrible thing for the average Syrian, you would be comically wrong if not for the pile of dead Syrians by the hands of your countymen. Your country is not there because the Syrian people need them. It's there because it sees an advantage to keeping Assad in power, Syrians be damned. There's a method to it, but the pretend humanitarianism has worn out its welcome. If all of Syria was a wasteland, and the only living creature was Assad upon a throne made from the dead of "his" people, Russia would consider it a victory. Because Assad now, and Assad forever is your nation's objective. Personally I don't see any more need to engage with you on this topic if you are going to insult my intelligence.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/syria/report-syria/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-has-killed-many-syrians-but-assads-forces-have-killed-even-more/2015/09/05/b8150d0c-4d85-11e5-80c2-106ea7fb80d4_story.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/14/world/middleeast/syria-war-deaths.html?_r=0 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/syria-war-russian-air-raids-kill-9400-year-160930082703222.html http://www.newsweek.com/russia-has-killed-more-syrian-civilians-assad-or-isis-last-month-report-426775 I think someone else might be destroying Syria more effectively than ISIS ever could.

Re: American intervention Lets also not forget several decades of deterring Soviet aggression against western Europe, participation in several major peacekeeping operations, the massive logistical outpourings in support of same and humanitarian operations, and other military operations over the decades that have been low visibility, but high efficiency. It's one thing to raise questions about certain actions, or chortle that so much is history, but simply hand waving it all as a certain poster has done shows a positively shallow understanding of geopolitics and world affairs. Re: Let the Syrian Army finish the job! But will it finish the job? This isn't the first major uprising Syria has faced. And the systems of oppression and rule that caused that first one, drum roll please, are the same that caused this last one. And without addressing those systems, it will simply lay the roots for the next generation of revolutionaries, who will certainly be armed in turn by Syria's neighbors again because again nothing has changed about that situation either. Fighting and winning against an insurgency broadly requires two parallel efforts: a. A military effort to suppress and prevent the insurgent from being able to militarily control the situation. This one is easy. But it is not decisive or going to bring a conclusion. b. Defeating the insurgency as an ideological-political movement. This one is not easy. This is however, the decisive part of winning a COIN fight. The military means of the insurgent are very modest. If it was strictly a matter of warheads on foreheads, we wouldn't have ISIS, or even the historical Afghan resistance of the 1980's. The problem is you need to remove the will or need for the population to resist or reject the legitimacy of the government. This again, sounds easy, because of COURSE the Syrian rebels will see the sheer might of Russia-Syrian forces murdering everyone and know the battle is lost! But that, however is again missing the point. It isn't the acceptance that right now fighting back is a bad idea that you're looking for, it's that the government is legitmate to rule. And while you may make armed resistance doubtful for the short term, without changing the factors that feed the resistance, you are just laying the atrocities that will be used to recruit the next wave of insurgents. It's basically that old cliche about the definition of insanity. We've already done killing thousands of Sunnis and ruling over same with a corrupt, murderous dynastic rule. It got us to where we are sitting now. Why will continuing the chain of repression and illegitimate government suddenly be different this time? And what sort of Syrian state, now soaked in the blood of the innocent be able to command it's children home to rebuild on the bones of their families?

When engaging targets, often you'll have enough information to tell you there is something worth a bullet, but not enough to reliably kill it. CMBS represents this less as the spotter sees a tank, and is frantically flipping through Janes All the World's Armor or whatever to figure out if it's a T-90 OR T-72, and more the spotter sees the antennas and optics on the top of the target (or "something" on the thermals) and is resolving it into a shootable target.

Looking at Aleppo and Mosul, I think I'm fairly certain who is doing more to fight the war on terror. May god have mercy on the Syrians, because Assad and Putin certainly have none. The only thing Russia is ensuring is an encore in a few decades at the expense of thousands of innocent dead right now. Not to mention this is a flaming pile of whataboutism. Russia's actions in the Ukraine are immoral, illegal, and unjustified by any measuring stick that is not manufactured in Moscow. What happened in Iraq, Poland, Cuba, Babylon, Kathmandu is all deeply and terribly irrelevant to what is happening right now to Ukrainians (and ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine if we're being honest) because Russia is pursuing a war of aggression to achieve no other ambition than denying the right of self determination to its neighbors. There's nothing to defend here. If I steal my neighbor's car, the fact that another poster once tipped over a cow doesn't change the fact I stole a car, and it is bad. Russia's actions in the Ukraine are immoral, and illegal. Russia's actions in Syria are immoral and frankly are war crimes that are only kept under wraps because of Russia's place on the UN. There is nothing to laud, nothing to defend, and the legacy of Putin will be the bloody sacrificial altar to the Assad family's prosperity, and a Russia alone, and ever more isolated from the world it seeks to frighten. The Russian people both deserve, and do not deserve this, for they are capable of so much more, and yet they seem inclined to follow anyone who will show them tanks in neat orderly lines, and how scary their democratic, militarily downsized, neighbors really are.

Propaganda is a very interesting area of study. Unsophisticated propaganda fails pretty easily because it tends to be very A is good, B is bad. A never makes mistakes and his here to protect you, while B is evil incarnate and desires to eat your babies. It doesn't work so well, especially in increasingly "free" information environments or with educated populations. Think of it like concrete, it's very hard (especially when counter-message information is hard to acquire!), but it's also brittle. If the state tells you that The Great Patriotic War was all sunshine and comrades trumping the Fascists at every turn, the monuments at gates at Moscow, and the fact grandpa curses his idiot Major who got all his friends killed ruptures this monolithic truth, which then casts doubt on the entire narrative. Basically you want to build "crumple zones" into your message. You admit errors, but contain them. Yes the early war Soviet efforts in 1941 were poor, undercut by bloated peacetime officers, but once the state sorted it out, all of us Comrades rallied and we fought to Berlin as Liberators! Yes, Afghanistan was a mess, and poorly thought out, but good Russian soldiers relying on each other redeemed the motherland and the Russian people. Again, the follow on questions are not permitted, it's enough that what is not the the "good" messaging is shown to satisfy people who know better than the state always being correct, it answers enough questions to hopefully dead-end the curious, and keeps the really nasty or unfortunate questions and answers locked up somewhere. Yes mistakes were made, but we fixed them and now onward to the gift shop. Which isn't to say that this wasn't, and is not done outside of the Soviet Union/Russian Federation, simply that until there's Russian films (or were Soviet films) showing a lot more honesty in history, there's reason to eye those films with some suspicion, or see them with footnotes.

There's still a practical limit to how far those portrayals could go, and it was only done at the whims of the government. There was a practical limit to how much could be shown, questions that could be asked, and unfortunate events displayed. Saying American films were equally propaganda oriented is missing the reality that US censorship was very modest, and especially in the post Red Scare era, largely oriented on making sure Americans were not overly exposed to boobs. There's attempted "messaging" (see Department of Defense participation in films), or official statements on films (see the start of Dr Strangelove and it's official USAF denial that the nuclear release authority could be compromised as filmed), but filmmakers could, and did show the US government and it's agencies in a profoundly negative light rather frequently with no restrictions. There's a big difference between Big Brother allowing you to toe the boundaries, and Big Brother being unable to do anything to stop you from making a film about him sodomizing a sheep. .

There's an importance to separate lack of realism for propaganda. Firstly as a tangent, I loved Fury for the following realism based reasons: 1. It captured the feel of being on a tank crew really well, that sort of closeness and intimacy that comes when you're basically sharing a coffin with some other dudes if stuff goes wrong. Like my crew at one time was a mix of a Fillipino immigrant, former California stoner, and ex-skateboarder from Manhattan (with a Micheal Wittman fixation), and there was nothing at all the same about us culturally, background, growing up, whatever, but for that stretch of time in D66 we were all as close as you get. 2. It captured the deeply ammoral concept of war. There were no square jawed heroes, and in a lot of ways it was a lot of guys who likely had once been "good" or at least normal burned up by war. The end of the movie? Didn't really like it. Felt it was too Hollywood. But the point wasn't showing how superior America is, and how just Americans are because American principles are American and thereby good, it was to give a violent end to the movie where the war consumes the warrior, leaving our outsider narrator to walk away. In that regard,I do also take some issue with the movie because as much as Fury's crew felt the full wages of war, there's a lot of other men who were in similar shoes who had to ride a boat back to the US, go back to Smalltown Iowa, and try to become normal non-killing non-tanking humans again. Which boy let me tell you, even making a smallish transition like I did, it's a deeply alienating experience. As more directly to propaganda: Plenty of American movies have the protagonist triumphing over hoards of whatever, massive bad guy organizations, laying waste to the entire something or other. This has less to do with "America uber alles" and much more to do with an individualistic ethos that regardless of reality, we adhere to. We don't celebrate good teams, we celebrate star players. We don't care how 352nd Pursuit Squadron did in WW2, we care about top aces and kill counts. Therein our movies will focus on a hero who is exceptional more often than not, because again, we believe firmly in the exceptional individual. However look beyond the American with the M60 in each hand, standing on the pile of dead commies and into how the US as a nation-state, or the American ideals are treated. There's a very large number of US war movies (to use a more direct example) that portray a much more troubled side to America and Americans at war. Films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, The Big Red One, Catch 22, and even Rambo all portray a very dim view of War, the Military, and America. Soviet film making however was entirely subordinated to the state, and the state's objectives. While it wasn't so crass as to just be the Red Army saves all, it never asked deeper questions, or delved too deep into troubling questions and behaviors. Soviet film making was controlled by the state, to the state's end, and that should not be forgotten.

Re: John My contention wasn't that Cold War Soviet movies were "tied" to when they were made, it was that historical movies are more reflective of when they are made, vs the historical event. The history is just a vehicle for whatever the movie is trying to tell us. Often the movie will go through extensive technical means to capture a feeling of the era (super accurate uniforms! The last Tiger tank that can move under its own power! 203,000 extras!), but that must be separated from the authentic of the portrayal itself, frequently personalities and events will be changed to better make the narrative. Soviet films can be, and I would contend are more often than not especially vulnerable to this given the way the Soviets employed movies as messaging. This doesn't mean they cannot be good, it simply means that it must be understood to be perhaps not a reliable narrative.

More disturbingly, here's some video raising some serious doubts about the protective package on what is suspected to the production model Armata:

Hey guys! I think I found the contractor tech demo for the M2A4 Bradley

RE: Knowing people And I am not without my connections either. There's a cultural difference between us vs them, they're just as racist as we are, etc, etc, etc. However in terms of driving forces...eh. The Islamic part is again interesting window dressing vs far more universal human xenophobia, limited worldview, and the like. My point in their immorality is piety and adherence to the book was a useful justification for doing things humans do elsewhere. They're just as sexually immoral, just as drunken, just as bad at being religious. It's just the same as every anti-immigrant argument a certain moron is making in my country right now, or Russian neo-nazis, or the more radical parts of UKIP or whatever other nonsense is going on. It's an externalization and dehumanization of a culture not understood, a deification of the mother culture, putting all the blame on the external (Shias, Jews, French Canadian etc), and everything done to justify it with pseudo-religion/science/politics is simply window dressing to get to the fact we all innately hold whatever we are to be superior to those "other" people in varying degrees. Extremist Islam superseded Arab Nationalism only because Arab Nationalism wasn't doing the job, and before that Arab Nationalism superseded pan-Muslim something or other because it didn't work, which replaced something else, and something else, and then something else forever and ever amen. The actions do not change, only the justification does. Tsarist Russia herds minorities into ghettos because they're not real Russians. Soviet Russia herds minorities into camps because they're counter-revolutionaries. Russian Federation oppresses minorities because they're not real Russians and are terrorists. Americans keep slaves because they're inferior humans, they don't let African Americans fully get involved in society because science shows their brains don't work. Americans lock up more African Americans because they're all thugs etc, etc again forever and ever amen. So you'll excuse me if I don't give much thought to the thin little draping of the Koran over the same old human song and dance. Re: Immorality In dealing with any extremist group, again, you've got a very small core of hardcore believers. Some might be more tolerant than others, but generally they're considered extremist for a reason. Often they'll assemble into some sort of echo chamber and bounce extremist ideas at each other until it's the only viable opinion left (see this behavior with Goose Steppers, Red Flag havers, Hood Wearing Moron, and self exploding varieties of extremists). The difference lies in the output. There's a freedom of expression and ideas that broadly speaking falls under the "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" So to use the evangelist example, bluntly he can condemn us all to hell six times over unless we wear church approved anti-sin underpants or whatever. But if he insists on doing harm in the process, then clearly he's over a line that needs addressing. Broadly speaking, the three categories I threw out was a paraphrasing of how most terror/insurgent groups look. Small ideological core, various hangers on, and then a more distant passive support network. It's been a good model for any group I've seen/interacted with in regards to extremist behavior. Re: Iraq Nah, just 2008-09 and then 2010-11. But here's the rub. What arcane majiks transformed Iraqis into some new wonderful race wholly unrecongizable to 2003? And indeed, what DID happen once order broke down in Iraq circa 2003, even when there wasn't a Western Soldier for miles. Was it the fact American boots touched the soil that drove the Iraqis to madness? Or the fact that after decades of on and off again violence with the Shia and Kurds that things were just waiting for a tipping point? I'd contend it was a house of cards waiting for the wind. If that wind was us, or that wind was regional instability or a resurgent Iran in 2025, who knows. But you don't get a fire in a vacuum. You need fuel, air, and ignition, and Iraq had a lot of that laying around. Which gets back to why it's very important to not fixate on the western intervention. It's a contributing factor for sure, but it's missing a much wider, more complicated picture, and trying to blame a massive sea change across a wide region on one destabilized country. It's arrogance to look to the world and think it crumbles because we force it to, vs we simply impact a bit of how it crumbles.

Sigh. Okay to your first point: I spent a few years in the middle east. I fought actual Islamic insurgents. I carried parts of one in a bag so we could process it for evidence (mostly just a ziploc bag marked "human hand, fragment" with the advertised contents. Most Islamic terrorists are literally some of the worst Muslims on the planet. We raided caches from die hard "ALL NON SUNNIS WILL DIE AT THE SWORD OF blah blah whatever" groups, and found SO MUCH porn it was insane. We had an ongoing joke about sunni vs shia gay, in that sunni phones tended to have very angry clearly man on man porn, while shia phones tended to have a lot of cross dressers and transsexual porn. We'd find penis pumps, fine booze, decadent makeup for their women folk, drugs (lots of drugs) etc, etc, etc. The Islamic part is an interesting manifestation of it, but it's really more to any revolutionaries anywhere: 1. It's got an ideological core of generally well educated, but people who feel totally disenfranchised from the current state of being. They are looking for an answer. This answer is often something entirely unattainable/ethereal like communism, or Islamic states, or whatever. Often the aderance is actually quite sincere, although to the point of blindness. These are your true believers who walk the walk. 2. Then there's your common fighters/direct supporters. Most of them are total oppurtunists. They're along for the ride because they're betting this is a ticket to something better than where they are at. They'll be hyper-adherents to the cause, but ISIS had been communist, they'd have been vocally die hard comrades until the tables turned, just like right now big parts of ISIS are suddenly discovering they have other places they need to get to. 3. Indirect supporters. These folks are the ones who do not call when they see someone planting a bomb, or do pay the "taxes" the extremist group levies on them without complaint. They might do it out of pragmatism, or again, opportunism (this is one of the reasons that ISIS did so well in western Iraq, less so the "YAY ISLAM!" and much more "hey, you're going to kill some Shias? High five bro!"). Again, their adherence is very limited and often only focused on what is needed to "get by" vs any sort of intellectual depth. Only for the first one will honest adherence matter, and again, look at ISIS's actual behavior, sex slaves, fancy cars, nice watches, drugs, it's all a total and bald faced affront to Islam....but it's totally a natural reaction of a disenfranchised and angry populace. Islam is just the toolset to give legitimacy to the actions. The longevity of the Syrian civil war has EVERYTHING to do with this Sunni majority that's been consistently oppressed by a minority group, and the loss of legitimate means of political participation. Again, please look deeply at Islamic teachings and ISIS's actions. Or even conservatism as a broader stroke. It's all just window dressing to an angry group of people seeking to achieve the power they feel is denied to them. As to the "I don't know where to begin," I meant it in the sense of having visited Iraq, seen how dysfunctional it was as a society, I don't think it'd have survived the Arab Spring as a functional state regardless of US invasion or no. It's pretty much what Syria is, only with the boot of oppression on a different sect's foot, with the always lovely Iranians on standby to play Saudia Arabia's role in Syria. It's really easy to point fingers now and blame the white imperialist Yankee man class, but equally important to understand Iraq was a very sick place, that wouldn't have weathered major civil disorder well. *edit* That DID NOT do civil disorder now that I think of it. Most of the damage we sorted through, destruction of institutions, infrastructure, whatever was inflicted by Iraqis. You'd see a lot of stuff that had been JDAMed, HEAT rounded, etc, but you'd also see a lot of power stations literally stripped of parts, back yards filled with rusty bits of what used to be key equipment for something, more or less stolen because reasons not known to man. Iraq descended into total disorder, the troops dropped their weapons and bugged out even at the concept of danger in places. While some stood and fought, it's really easy to imagine the Shia regions taking off on their own, and a much weakened Sunni center getting bogged down like the Syrian government was pre-Russian intervention. The US invasion changed a lot of those dynamics, but the middle east was on a path to chaos and bad times regardless of US policy post 2001, and it's really oddly racist to imagine the Arab world unable to set it's own course (for better or worse) without puppet masters doing it for them or something.

Re: On viper heads: Killing leaders is less useful than often is imagined, especially in terrorist type organizations. In conventional organizations (uniformed military forces, functional governments etc), there's a systematic way of dealing with losing the guy in charge. Unconventional forces, generally are much the same. ISIS especially is VERY acquanted with leadership loss and replacement, as while it took a while for OBL to become dead....pretty much everyone between him and the lowest echelons of AQ was killed/captured and replaced several times over. It's just a fact of life. Some of the more senior positions of AQ were only filled for days, sometimes even hours before being explosively vacated again. ISIS is not AQ...but it's got a lot of alumni and institutional knowledge from same. That said: times to kill leaders: 1. Cult of personality. Some organizations are entirely built around one specific ruler. Not an Emir/Fuhrer/Lord Marshal/Sith Lord, THE Emir/Fuhrer/Lord Marshal/Sith Lord. In organizations built firmly around one personality there's often a leadership void, and often intentionally, successors are left weak and placed in vulnerable positions. This is likely the logic Russia is following in killing the various militia unit leaders. For the Ukrainians, tactically speaking most of the militias are going to be about the same level of danger regardless of which mook is in charge of it. On the other hand, Russia is trying to consolidate the various bandit-y people into one more controlled chain of command, so removing the only realistic leader results in a group that's just begging for some Russian spec ops guy in a track suit who is a "miner" to come lead them. 2. The Yamamoto. While the example is not the best, if there's an especially talented leader who has capabilities beyond simply being adequate at leading, it may become worthwhile to off them. So Darth Vader for instance, is an especially worthwhile target because he's a Sith Lord who's also a high level leader of some skill inside the Empire that is entirely irreplaceable, while Captain Needa is just one of hundreds of Imperial Naval commanders who can be replaced without must of a hiccup. 3. The OBL. While the value of Bin Ladin to Islamic extremism post 2001 or so is debatable, his position in the American psyche and international perception gave a value to making him dead. In terms of how it impacted the enemy, eh, it was a pretty nasty black eye to have him ultra murdered where he was "safe," but more realistically his death positively affected US prestige and American morale (civilian morale mostly) well outside of most operations. You shouldn't of course mistake this for a justification to kill leaders often, it's really limited to national level enemies with massive name recognition. Targeting one person is hard, especially if they're a valuable person. If you don't have some assurance of effects, it's often a waste to pursue a narrower killing strategy vs destroying more conventionally valued assets. Re: Iraq If we didn't go into Iraq, it'd likely have been another Arab spring type victim. The problems of the middle east are not ones that can be forever contained by strong leadership. We're seeing extremism because moderation has been successfully contained, coopted, or crushed. For decades the struggle has been kept under wraps...but even in a fairly modest moment of weakness it has come boiling out. Syria is unsustainable with an Assad in charge. You can have a totalitarian regime be widely popular, but the people need to see the The Leader as representing them and their needs. This is in many ways the genius of Putin, despite taking more and more from Russians, he has established an aura of being for the people through fairly meaningless, but high visibility actions, combined with a racial-nationalist push in a country that's already fairly xenophobic. If this uprising dies out, it'll just come back again in 20 years or so. It's not like Hama hasn't been burned down before, and I suspect it will be burned down again.

Nope. One of the frustrating things about Ravens is they were loud enough to clue in the locals a drone was operating in the area. We had a variety of other sensors I won't discuss, but we could see drops in activity or people who were doing suspicious stuff stop until they couldn't hear the Raven any more. On the other hand, flying the Raven around worked really well at suppressing bad guy movements because they were never sure if the drone was watching them or not, so there was that much, and it gave us an awesome way to cover up some of the other intelligence assets we used (so if an informant saw them planting a bomb, we could claim it was the drone that saw them and conceal that we had someone on the inside*) I've seen some of the little quadcoptery guys that were somewhat quiet, but I have yet to hear/see any that were truly below detection thresthold. *Of course, while I cannot confirm or deny it, I might have heard rumors of the opposite being done to encourage some terrorist cells to go all paranoid mexican standoff by trying to find the non-existent informant in their midst.

If I took every time I've written a coherent rational reply to the same exact statements made in a certain post, I would likely have a small novel's worth of writing for no great end. Instead I treated it just as seriously as it deserved. Like here's a few random points worth eyerolling: " West from ancient times has always been interested in the east expansion and the vast russian land and resources. Napoleon, WW1, WW2 and now NATO. Its just history repeating itself, its not that hard to see." This is pretty dumb. It's like saying Russians will always invade Poland because it has called to them and that Japan is on the verge of returning to invade China. There's zero, none, zip, nadda interest in controlling Russia any more than keeping Russia out of other people's countries. "The author is right that NATO is the actual aggressor trying to gain ground since the fal of the Soviet Union. A look at the map is enough to understand. " Let's try this on for size: Does flood insurance cause flooding? More people get flood insurance, mysteriously where flooding occurs, so clearly flood insurance is bringing in flooding. NATO went where countries feel threatened by Russian actions. It expanded because some protection against Russia seemed prudent when viewed through the lens of countries that had just left several decades of being economically, militarily, and culturally dominated by what realistically was a different brand of Russian empire. Ukraine is proving to be a really good example of why inviting in NATO was pretty prudent actually. " Middle east is badly messed up by miscalculated western interventions that brought nothing but chaos in the region. ISIS, rise of radical Islam, refugees drowning a few miles from Europe's borders. I think its a bit ridiculous to label Russia as the bad guy in this situation. " The middle east is messed up for a variety of reasons. Western intervention is one of them. Reckless Soviet foreign policy played its role too. So did Imperialism. So has Autocratic dictatorships and non-representative government. So has radical islam and the discrediting of moderate political-religious options. Basically Syria isn't a "western" problem, in the reality that it's a terrible state that regularly murdered its own people, that suffered a revolution that would have happened regardless of anything done in the west. It would have likely ended by now except for Iranian and Russian intervention, so as a result creepy Al-No-Chin can continue to rule from his skull throne or whatever. The various rebel groups owe way more to their coreligionist sunni neighbors than anything coming from the West. So again, the original post was laughably poor, and frankly had all the depth of a dinner plate. I'm really tired of poorly educated "facts," regardless of if they're all "poor Russia!" "all Hail Trumplord!" or any other number of easily disproved but widely followed positions. It's like we've just tossed out the brakes and fully embraced being ignorant because it is somehow agreeable.

Simply put, NATO will soon rule over most of Western Russia, and every home in Denmark will have all the Borstal it can handle. We fill our harpsicord factories with Russian slaves, and built monuments to reality TV stars using the rubble of the great works of Russia. I'm glad you were here to point this out though.

BC is usually considered correct. The spotting would really depend on exposure and other factors. Most small drones have a distinctive acoustic profile though, so while less help to tanks, they're way less stealthy than you'd think they were.

Re: 105 MM Especially at CMBS range, late model 105 MM DU will still wreck faces. Re: MG vs Drone We trained to engage helicopters with our CROWS if we saw the need to. I have to imagine a spotted Zala/Raven is a pretty priority target, and for a mounted/stabilized gun, certainly not the hardest thing to hit (again, we're talking about something going in the 20-30 MPH range). Also might be interesting to see some of the C-IED jammers could do if employed as counter-UAV systems.

Well what about Russia's treatment of the Tartars? Or perhaps more relevantly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-has-killed-many-syrians-but-assads-forces-have-killed-even-more/2015/09/05/b8150d0c-4d85-11e5-80c2-106ea7fb80d4_story.html If Russia was concerned about the Syrian people, it should likely have picked different friends. By most accounts though, you all have just joined in the fun Assad is having.

It's worth noting though that small raven-like drones fly well within the range (both in speed and altitude) of being effectively engaged by MG fire. Flying a Raven or Zala over exposed anything should be a pretty short lived mission (troops or equipment in heavy cover might choose just to hide though). I think Raven tops out around 500 feet, and maybe 20ish MPH I think? A quick look doesn't seem to indicate the Zala is much more capable.

Re: Oil Two parter actually: a. On Iraq Oil had a certain amount of influence...but not in terms of Iraqi oil. Indeed, look at proportionally how much effort went into Iraqi governance and stability (although it didn't matter much), vs the oil industry. Realistically the goal was to remove what was seen as a destabilizing influence in a region that had greater economic value. We weren't treating the tumor because we wanted the tumor healthy, we wanted to keep it from affecting the surrounding organs, to use a poor analogy. Of course this was moronic, and viewed the Middle East in a 2D straightforward root of all evil (well, roots, Iraq and Iran) perspective. But again, having been there, the oil was viewed as a solution to accomplish stability to achieve regional happy fun times vs START THE OIL YEAH! b. On Syria Syria has much deeper roots in religion and politics. It didn't need to have the oil to progress into utter chaos, it would have done that any way (see Libya, it has oil mind you, but how little of a role it's actually played. At it's heart, by far more than ISIS and oil. In a nutshell, the ruling party of Syria is offensive to it's neighbors for political-religious reasons. When it appeared destabilized, and in the process of gunning down Sunnis, this brought in a mess of different elements, or forged further internal opposition. The Sunni neighbors historically have not hestitated to throw fighters and weapons at Sunni vs infidel fights. Then it gets super-terrible, as the Syrians government handles things hamfistedly. The most effective fighters are extremists (on both sides) and stuff gets nuts. Broadly the west gets involved because it never liked Assad and oh god the civilians...but there's also a lot of reluctance because of Iraq and how badly Libya worked out. Russia however for it's own reasons would drain the blood from every child in Syria so long as it ensures their man is still in place, and Syria can still serve their ends. There's no need to get oil involved, it's just at least in my opinion, something people cannot detach themselves from in terms of not trying to understand the underlying regional issues, because we understand oil, we all suck pretty bad at "getting" the middle east. Re: SAMS. It's more, the supposition of the article is pretty much the SAM is in play, and everything that flies is now in terrible danger. It doesn't change much, the west missed the window to do the no-fly zone, there's a whole lot of ways to kill the missile system and kill it ultra dead if need be, and in terms of observation, observation goes two ways. And I think we're discovering some interesting things about stuff the Russians have held close to their chest, while they're not seeing much we haven't shown. Basically if I told you three Patriot batteries were located in the middle east, would you consider it impossible for the Russians to operate? Because there's far more than three, and they're a much more capable missile. It's another super-hyped system the Russians use to make a statement. If they had Armatas in service they'd be parked somewhere safe in Syria to keep American sky Marines from keeping Hero syrian jet pilots from dropping aid barrels on the terrorist babies or whatever.

I sort of petered out into it pretty quickly. It's a lot of connecting dots because there's dots and if there's dots OF COURSE THEY ARE CONNECTED TO MAKE THIS PICTURE OF A PONY! vs "there is a lot of data and events, some of whom are connected, some are not." Also energy as a primary driving factor in the conflict is...sort of eyeroll worthy. Or check it this way: Given the drop in oil prices and similar products, and increased production outside of the middle east, a set of oil pipelines still have some value. But are they enough value to be worth causing a war over? And the answer is no, not really. There's enough other cheaper "cleaner" options vs creating an anarchistic festering tumor in the middle east. The whole SAM part is just rubbish. It's like claiming because the US has Patriot missiles AND jets in theater (because they do, just outside of Syria) it's now an even fight. Too many conclusions though. Not enough analysis.

I'm on board for having lesser Abrams as I've discussed before. I think the current one should be called a SEP v3 or something simply because it carries a lot of v3 upgrades. We could put the v2 in game sans AMP/LWS, but possibly with APS/ERA options (as the ERA is an already existing kit that can be put on the Abrams with unit level equipment, while the APS is proposed in game as a bolt on theater sort of upgrade so no reason it might not go on v2s if they were what arrived in country). Wouldn't mind M1A1SA and later model M2A2 ODS to represent the various National Guard BCTs too (there's some talk of sending limited Guard deployments to Eastern Europe, and they'd certainly play a part if the war dragged on/kicked off again after a cease fire, while also giving a less drastically superior to Russian equipment set).

Did an Abrams once touch you inappropriately or something?