Bearstronaut
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Posts
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Posts posted by Bearstronaut
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5 hours ago, Kinophile said:
Interesting how we've often pointed to the ZSU NCOs as superior to Russian. They might be, but not by much when compared to proper Western non-coms.
A lot of the competent pre-war western trained NCOs are likely dead, wounded, or psychologically burnt out at this point.
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45 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Heh
In 2014 it became very clear that RT routinely published blatantly false imagery, quotes, facts, etc. without properly referencing timeframes and/or locations. It really shown a light on what RT really was (a propaganda outlet for an autocratic regime) and what it wasn't (a legitimate news source). Yet it wasn't until this war that action was taken against them. Now RT is basically limited to internet broadcasting in the West as it's infrastructure in the US and France have gone into bankruptcy:
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/eu-court-backs-eu-ban-russia-today-2022-07-27/
https://global.espreso.tv/french-court-declares-russia-today-france-bankrupt
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/media/rt-america-layoffs/index.html
Steve
First time I ever saw RT was in a hotel room in Seoul in 2012. I was flipping channels on the TV and was surprised to hear English so I watched it for about an hour before going out to the bars. It was comically anti-American and I had a good laugh while pre-gaming some soju in my room.
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8 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
Graham is a political weasel, very good at feeling the political winds and sailing with them. Anything he says is only designed to make him look good, statesmanlike, irregardless of any vetting by the Ukrainians.
What they have probably done is used him to amplify the propaganda campaign, by telling him something Very Very Secret, and swearing him to Biggest Pinky Swear that he won't divulge, No Sir, You Have My Word.
He's the proverbial political sock puppet, and being used as such.
Graham is a weasel but he's also not an idiot. He spent over 30 years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves and was on the Armed Forces Committee from 2003 to 2019. He's always been a foreign policy hawk and I think Zelensky probably told him the truth about their upcoming offensive.
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1 hour ago, Butschi said:
Is there proof of that? It boosted US morale, sure, but did it have a measurable impact on Japanese morale?
Yamamoto's obsession with the US carrier force after the raid led to the badly planned Midway operation and the destruction of most of the Kido Butai.
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2 hours ago, DesertFox said:
We don´t know who is responsible for that, but it would make no sense (IMHO) for UKR doing it. They have more important targets to eliminate in the occupied areas.
The Doolittle Raid didn't make much sense and did negligible damage but it rattled the Japanese public. I sense that this was done for a similar reason.
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Started this the other night. I really enjoyed that first mission. Had a couple successful ambushes and was ambushed in turn myself. One of my bazooka teams finished the scenario with 18 kills. Those guys were a couple of little Terminators.
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1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
Ha, you fell into my trap! The one on the left is historical Polish eagle device which I pasted, and not the Ukrainian 82 Airborne badge. So you see it is similar.
Anyway, may thinking was that it was close enough for the Russian to make up another batch of stories about Polish soldiers fighting for the UKR, this time the regular Polish army.
Anyone play any of the Witcher games? Looks a lot like the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Redania.
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27 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:
I think we better prepare ZSU and NATO to march on Moscow. Otherwise, the best we can hope for is another temporary ceasefire.
There won't be any march on Moscow. That WILL end in nuclear warfare. The best we can really hope for is the collapse and routing of the Russian military in Ukraine and then the addition of the Ukrainians into NATO.
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37 minutes ago, MustyFerret said:
I have not touched my PS5 in weeks, I always gravitate back to tactical/hex-based wargames. That seems to be my default setting.
I love me some Combat Mission but I work as an intel analyst so some days after work I don't really wanna think about military stuff and just prefer to chop up Mongols with a samurai sword.
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Nah, CM is a computer only game. I use my PS5 for other games.
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I got CMBN back in 2016 and since then I have slowly bought the entire catalogue of games. I have my PS5 that I enjoy but I always end up coming back to Combat Mission. There is simply nothing else like it.
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12 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
South Korea requires all males to serve in the military for 2 years. After they have completed their service they go back into the economy and don't need to be maintained as active reservists. This is pretty disrupting to their lives. But it means that if they are ever invaded they have a truly massive reserve of people who have already been fully trained once in their lives, and only need refresher training in order to be fully combat ready.
They do one day of training per year that consists of showing up to simulate a call-up of the reserves. I used to see them walking around Seoul sometimes in outdated camo pattern uniforms with hair wildly out of regulation.
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30 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Even saw a US House of Reps member saying the proof that Patriot didn't work last night can be found in the Durham Report.
LOL, what?
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2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
This is a popular opinion coming from the active US or UK military personnel, but people who are more familiar with the post-Soviet system (or other systems) are sceptical of it.
Actually, if a necessary function in the unit is taken care of, it does not matter if the person doing it is called an officer, NCO, warrant officer or however you name him. It is just that in the US/UK system the NCO is someone who his appointed for his post for a long time and may generate lots of experience, while a junior officer is someone who does this function briefly and then in a relatively short time goes on to more senior things. But this is just a quirk of the military career path adopted in some (maybe most) Western militaries - equally well one could have the same job fulfilled by professional junior officers of long standing.
A line from the US Army's Creed of the Non-Commissioned Officer is "Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties: they will not have to accomplish mine." Take of that what you will.
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4 hours ago, Offshoot said:
Zelensky is pouring cold water on this or dissimulating - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65550427
"Speaking at his headquarters in Kyiv, President Zelensky described combat brigades, some of which were trained by Nato countries, as being "ready" but said the army still needed "some things", including armoured vehicles that were "arriving in batches".
"With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful," he said in an interview for public service broadcasters who are members of Eurovision News, like the BBC. "But we'd lose a lot of people. I think that's unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.""
I don't know when the Ukrainian counter-offensive will kick off but I wouldn't put too much stock in what Zelensky has to say about it. The Ukrainians have to maintain OPSEC so it's not like Zelensky is gonna go around saying "Our forces are fully ready and the offensive is imminent."
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7 hours ago, CAZmaj said:
Rampant corruption is reported to have rendered Russia's ballistic missile early warning system virtually useless. Scams by contractors are said to have led to unsuitable foreign-made components being used on a wide scale.
The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that a scandal is about to break over a component substitution scam that it says has crippled Russia's early warning radars. Such scams have been widespread in Russian military procurement, often with the collusion of corrupt officials.
A poorly maintained or non-functioning early warning ballistic missile early warning system in a paranoid and belligerent country like Russia is highly ominous.
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5 minutes ago, Seminole said:
I’m going to get banned for asking if Ukraine is still conducting a draft when you assert their force is volunteer vis-a-vis Russia’s? I totally respect that’s it’s your sandbox, but it shouldn’t be an alternate reality, where up is down and drafted is voluntary. That’s a disservice to the discussion here and flow of ideas.
There are drafted Ukrainian soldiers as well as volunteers. Some people have to be compelled to fight, even in an existential war such as the one Ukraine is currently fighting. All the major Allied powers had conscription in WW2, even the USSR who were facing genocide and annihilation. The Red Army had quite draconian disciplinary measures as well. The fact the Ukraine needs to resort to conscription to fill the ranks doesn't make them any less worthy of support.
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31 minutes ago, DesertFox said:
Possibly false flag.
I guess a false flag is possible but I don't see why they would do it this way. It makes Russian air defense look incredibly impotent/incompetent.
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7 hours ago, Fenris said:
Perhaps they're making room in the prison system for "malcontents" that are soon to be rounded up, hastily sentenced and after a month or two in jail moved to the front to sign contracts.
Rinse, repeat. Conscript mercenaries with no rights or benefits under the russian military system.
God, that's some really evil, dystopian s**t.
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8 minutes ago, Butschi said:
But where do you see the Chinese actually expanding their territory?
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The Russian organization Gulagu conducted interviews with two former Wagner commanders detailing repeated war crimes and brutal treatment of their own men. One talks about shooting children and the other mentions executing any civilians found in an occupied area. Full on Einsatzgruppen stuff. The full interview is available on YouTube but as of yet I don't think anyone has translated the entire thing. I've found some translated snippets on Twitter however.
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8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Now THERE's an angle I forgot to explore... there is absolutely no need for a 19 year old to be doing this sort of work. We have civilians for that who are already knowledgeable about IT and what will happen to his or her kids' family life if mommy or daddy decide to share government secrets with the wrong people. Sure, those contractors cost more money than Airman Affordable, but in life you get usually get what you pay for.
Steve
35Ts are immensely useful to the Army. Sure, a lot of their garrison duties could be done by civilians, but almost every single one of those civilians is a former 35T. In the field, forget about it. You aren't going to have middle aged civilian contractors out working on classified systems with a maneuver brigade during combat operations. As someone who used the systems the 35Ts maintained, they were some of the most important people out there. Also, not everyone joins the military to kick in doors and shoot people in the face. I did nerd stuff too but I was no less a soldier than any 11B. I had to meet the same standards of behavior and physical ability that they did.
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We came really close to war last September. A Russian SU-27 attempted to shoot down a British Rivet Joint over the Black Sea but the missile malfunctioned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/world/europe/russian-jet-british-spy-plane.html?smid=tw-share
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10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
To me the format does seem consistent with the general way information is documented by the US military.
FWIW the US military LOVES Microsoft Office.
Moar BAOR goodness...
in Combat Mission Cold War
Posted
Oh my god it's so very '80s.