NamEndedAllen

No no no! Fake news!! Great Britain is the REAL puppet master. And they are of course giant lizards disguised by alien tech. Everyone knows that. https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/768800/David-Icke-queen-shape-shifting-lizard

I'm just surprised in view of the extensive use of mines across the planet *since* WWII and their danger to successive generations, that at least SOME advancement of this tech might have been tested and deployed where needed in and by some of the various countries and conflict zones. In the past 80 years or so.

Far from being a new concept, remote controlled de-mining vehicles were designed and widely use last century. While reading and rereading various accounts about Kursk, I came across a vehicle I’d not seen before. Numerous sources discuss the German use of such equipment. There are even model kits of one of these! https://www.walthers.com/military-german-army-wwii-remote-control-mine-resin-kit-springer-radio-guided-medium-tracked-carrier-pkg-2 This is from a more extensive article at https://www.historynet.com/arms-men-german-remote-controlled-vehicles-world-war-ii/ More references follow at bottom of the excerpt. The Germans issued a more refined model, the B.IV, to various Funklenkpanzer battalions and separate companies in April 1942. The steel-hulled B.IV was not intended to be expendable: It carried a 450- kilogram explosive charge in a detachable bin mounted on its front. It had a driver’s compartment, enabling an operator to drive the B.IV like a tank for a considerable distance before dismounting and activating its radio control. Once radio control was initiated, an operator in a command tank, typically a Panzerkampfwagen Mark III or Tiger tank or a Sturmgeschütz III assault gun, steered the B.IV to its target. Using radio controls, the operator detonated explosive bolts securing the demolitions bin to the B.IV, depositing the bin on or near its target. After the vehicle made good its escape, the operator also detonated the charge by radio control. Borgward built 1,181 B.IVs before its Bremen factory was bombed out in October 1944. After testing Kégresse’s recovered prototype in late 1940, the Wehrmacht directed Borgward to design a “light load carrier.” The result was the Goliath, which the Germans began issuing to armored engineer and assault engineer units in the spring of 1942. Unlike the B.IV, the wire-guided Goliaths were designed to be expendable, a species of caterpillar-tracked mobile mine. An operator controlled the vehicle via a telephone cable spooling out from the rear of the Goliath to a joystick control box. As the electric motors used in early-model Goliaths were expensive and their battery life was short, a later model was powered by a gasoline engine. Borgward produced 7,579 Goliaths, counting both versions. For vehicles whose operations were typically conducted with utmost secrecy, B.IV and Goliath-equipped units nevertheless saw considerable action on every front where the Wehrmacht fought. H https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgward_IV her Here is a model

You OK? Not a collateral damage casualty? Please do not expire prematurely!

Well, he DID say he was really just an entertainer. Or was that his comrade AlexJones? Of course, TOKYO ROSE and AXIS SALLY(s) also performed “entertainment”. In the service of the actual Nazis and their allies in Japan. Some things never change. But meanwhile, a certain forum member’s fervent plea, “Are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet” has finally been answered.

Just about time for this. With all the sturm and drang down southish. I’ve been hoping to see this, perhaps crashing into and past Svatove, Kreminna line. Or?

It’s funny seeing the Nazis call other people “Nazis”.

"Dear residents of the Ukrainian Crimea! The Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps will soon make a raid of volunteers on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which is temporarily occupied by the Putin regime,” the message stated, according to the Crimea Partisans Telegram channel, which is dedicated to the liberation of the peninsula. “We, volunteers of free Russia, consider it our duty to help the Crimeans clear the peninsula of the war criminal Putin Please remain calm and assist us as much as possible." https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-partisans-threaten-crimean-incursion-next

(shhh: “hit ‘em where they ain’t…hit ‘em where they ain’t…hit ‘em where they ain’t”…and THEN…!)

Just a wild thought. Remember that idea long ago about the “shortcut” sweep up across the Russkie border and then back down again into Ukraine? While in general these raids would seem intended in part to draw some Russian combat units to the area, they might instead draw other border units in the region, thinning that rehion even further. Because Russians of course wouldn’t want to fall for Ukraine “obvious” feints, and draw off front line units as the offensive draws near. Clearly there are problems with the notion: Ukraine regular units, armed with USA weapons aren’t supposed to cross Russia’s Magic Border. And certainly would be crossing a (political) line! But I keep hearing a voice saying, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

NATO-trained units will serve as tip of spear in Ukraine’s counteroffensive -(Wash Post) By Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk June 4, 2023 at 9:50 a.m. PT When Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive finally begins, the fight will be led by brigades armed not only with Western weapons but also Western know-how, gleaned from months of training aimed at transforming Ukraine’s military into a modern force skilled in NATO’s most advanced warfare tactics. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/04/ukraine-nato-training-counteroffensive-47th-brigade/

Thanks, George. I will look into Whiteboard. And thank you for your superb CM work. Partly your fault I have to solve this!

Not looking real good as the second quarter winds down. The truism of “Live by the 3, Die by the 3” being emphatically demonstrated. So far.

Remember this? 2014. It’s been nine long years. And oceans of blood, sweat and tears: https://youtu.be/NOCbW1hc6Ng

War fueling the advance of drone technologies https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/drone-swarms-got-targeting-system-updates-in-flight-in-recent-aukus-demo

As I said, we do largely agree. The disconnect may be the implication of how fundamental military spending was. If you weren’t meaning to assert this, my and possibly other pushbacks’ misunderstanding. No one here suggested that, apart perhaps from my opinion in response to your thought experiment - that even with a “normal” degree of arms spending, the internal and often bizarre and/or cruel ideological rather than fact and market based economic and “governance” (autocratic , dictatorial) the USSR was a house of cards. Always one or two crises away from disintegration. BTW, I don’t think anyone is relying on a single Atlantic article for the discussion. It was a good one that’s run its course, raising some good points. Complex, huge society of disparate societies, filled with contradictions and bad decisions. No one single cause of longterm failure necessary. On that, I believe we all agree. Thanks again.

Good conversation, and thanks for sticking with the back and forth. I agree with much of your points. We end up at the same collapse “peak”, perhaps by different but not really contradictory routes. Your point about the entire mindset caused by the military competition with the West and how that contributed to distort everything else in one way or another makes a lot of sense.

An unbiased search of the literature about the USSR economic collapse is not displaying your assertion that military spending, arms race was THE fundamental cause of its collapse. Most every reference shows what everyone here has been saying. A host of severe problems, failures, events, and inherent weaknesses were together fatal. There is a tremendous historical literature and research on this. But the subject is getting too far off topic, so I’ll stop with just some non Atlantic (?) references. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/soviet_end_01.shtml https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-reasons-for-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union.html https://www.rbth.com/history/330630-how-soviet-economy-work https://www.britannica.com/story/why-did-the-soviet-union-collapse https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/021716/why-ussr-collapsed-economically.asp

That’s an interesting thought experiment or alternate history proposal. Would less arms spending by the Soviets have saved them? Put another way, was the Soviet Union a stable, healthy, going concern apart from its swollen defense budget? In a word, no. The entire edifice was rotten. Examples include “Collectivization” of agriculture, destroying their ability to even *feed* themselves. The oil price collapse, a tremendous shock to an artificially propped up financial house of cards. Chernobyl. Afghanistan. Glasnost. Lithuanian independence. East Berliners knocking down the Wall. Even with a somewhat less extreme defense budget, with failures across the board, unrelated to just budget levels. The utter corruption at every level sapped nearly every Soviet enterprise. You might look to any other primitive command economies riven by corrupt dictatorships for comparisons. Perhaps the most that could be said is that your scenario would have delayed but not prevented the breakup of the Soviet Union. Often left unsaid is the artificial nature of the USSR itself, the inherent difficulty of keeping the lid on the great number of wildly varying “republics” and peoples tied together however unwillingly. To be clear, no one is disputing that defense spending took a toll on the Soviet economy. Ultimately, the judgement of history nowadays is that the Soviet Union’s collapse was due to a number of causes not limited to arms race spending. Or more simply, they made too many losing economic and social bets.

Which is why the post Cold War investigations revealed the Soviet *actual* spending was…essentially flat, as now understood. The house of cards was collapsing without any additional pushes by USA spending. It was rotten for a very long time. And it looks to be about ready to do a rerun!

Good point about the differential. Still, it is commonplace to hear and read people saying that the USA spent the Soviets into collapse. We need to keep focused on the fact that *increased* Soviet spending did *not* happen, and a non-existent increase to “keep up” was therefore not the cause of the collapse. As Steve enumerated and you said, the collapse was in motion for a long time. The die was cast by insistence on ideological, command economy. Failure to acknowledge the market’s priority over ideology meant that unlike South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan’s market based economies that also suffered extreme degrees of defense spending, the Soviets could not withstand the various slings and arrows of real world economics. Reality caught up with them.

Excellent point. And interesting to see that ~10 year rise between ‘75 and ‘85. Otherwise more or less flat until around 2003-4.

True, although presumably some technological skill was earned for all the wasted billions. FAR scarier was the actual response: The Dead Hand Doomsday Machine! https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/09/22/missile-defense-didnt-win-the-cold-war/ After the Cold War sturm and drang quited down, SDI facts began to publicly emerge, “Russian (and American) scientists knew early on that SDI, which sought to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles with lasers, was a pipe dream. Far more consequentially, the Soviets knew that they could easily defeat Reagan’s “Star Wars” fantasy by launching hundreds of decoys and saturating the skies with more nuclear warheads than the system could handle.”

It’s an interesting point with more than a grain of truth to it. This explanation is repeated often, but without critical context. Soviet defense spending *was* excessive. But actual Soviet Cold War spending and policy was flat. US policy did not itself strongly affect it. Note also that Taiwan, South Korea and Israel also suffered significant defense burdens, like the Soviet Union. But they grew their economies. The more fundamental cause? Ideology. And how it distorted and undermined the economy: “The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense”. https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. It did not reward individual or collective effort; it absolved Soviet producers from the discipline of the market; and it gave power to officials who could not be held accountable by consumers. Consequently much of the investment that went into the civilian sector of the economy was wasted. The command economy pre-dated the Cold War and was not a response to American military spending. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, but it was not defeated by American defense spending.” Another common refrain among conservatives is that Reagan simply “outspent” the Soviets. But Soviet defense spending remained flat throughout the 1980s. More significantly, Gorbachev was unalterably opposed to increasing military spending; he fought a relentless campaign by the Soviet military-industrial complex to spend exorbitant sums in response to Reagan’s buildup... Despite costing taxpayers billions of dollars, SDI had no significant effect on Soviet strategic decisionmaking. Gorbachev rejected every single proposal to build a Soviet response to Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/478941-lets-stop-revising-history-reagan-didnt-win-the-cold-war/

The hits keep coming: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-claims-ukrainian-drone-boats-attacked-its-navy-ship-off-turkey Russia’s Defense Ministry (MoD) on Wednesday released a video it claims shows the Russia’s Defense Ministry (MoD) on Wednesday released a video it claims shows the destruction of a Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessel (USV) attempting to attack the Project 18280 Yuriy Ivanov class intelligence ship Ivan Khurs in the Black Sea about 90 miles northeast of Turkey's Bosphorus Strait. The video, published by the MoD’s official Zvezdanews outlet, shows the last seconds of what it says was a Ukrainian USV approaching the Ivan Khurs. Several tracer rounds, apparently from deck-mounted 14.5mm machine guns, are observed narrowly missing the USV before it turns and is struck on the bow, exploding in a tremendous fireball. destruction of a Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessel (USV) attempting to attack the Project 18280 Yuriy Ivanov class intelligence ship Ivan Khurs in the Black Sea about 90 miles northeast of Turkey's Bosphorus Strait. The video, published by the MoD’s official Zvezdanews outlet, shows the last seconds of what it says was a Ukrainian USV approaching the Ivan Khurs. Several tracer rounds, apparently from deck-mounted 14.5mm machine guns, are observed narrowly missing the USV before it turns and is struck on the bow, exploding in a tremendous fireball.