Nastypastie

Hang on, this kid is 18. The conscription age was just lowered to 25. He has 7 years to make a few kids and basically be exempt until he's in his 40's. This whole thing looks like a complete nothing story. What is he even complaining about? He can cross the desertion bridge if Ukraine drop their conscription age down to 18.

There's a new Kraut. He makes the case that in about the only way is the term Eastern Europe still relevant, is that it defines a bunch of people who really are not a fan of Russians (or imperialism).

It can be a tactical victory AND a strategic defeat. Depends on the war aims of the parties involved. There have been plenty of those in history.

There's a new Kraut if anyone likes his stuff.

Its not viable to up armour to upper surfaces of a tank. Modern tanks are already extremely heavy on the top armour by historical measures with around 40mm or so and it makes them crazy heavy as it is. You'd need about 50% more than that to even stop shell fragments from a close burst from a 155, let alone an EFP or a shaped charge. It's long been the case that its only viable to stop HEAT from the frontal arc and even then that has been since the advent of composite armour. When you think about the surface area you are talking about compared to actually quite small armoured front section of a tank you can imagine how having in any way comparable armour on the roof would simply not be possible. Pretty much at any scale.

Not to mention current loiter times. With half hour endurance a unit is looking at needing 48 small drones to keep a single unit in the air doing CAP 24/7. More if you count lost time for takeoff and recovery.

Many to sink it, even with the light aluminum hulls of today. The problem with ships is the volume. Pierce a tank and you're bound to hit something good, pierce a ship and most likely you hit a bunch of empty space and non critical equipment. You really want semi armour piercing or blast fragmentation for straight explosive yield vs ships.

M113 TOW's are AMAZING if you can get them properly hull down so its literally just a dudes head and the tube poking out. You wind up with literally 20x BMP1's flinging dozens of those horrible ATGM's at you vainly as your crews pick them off one by one.

That thing doesn't look close to the sort of yield needed to shift that span. Troll farm out in force in that comment section too.

Looks exactly like these from December. Israeli supposedly.

Or the above pictured Sparrows. Or just firing off their reserve stocks of R-77 and the like now that they have alternative western supplies and seemingly the means to use them.

The forward wings are more forward and shorter on a Sidewinder. Looks like an AIM7 Sparrow except I believe the rear fins should be pointed, not cropped. No idea what this is if not a Sparrow.

While I have no actual idea about effectiveness, I can say these videos always seem to coincide with a bout of complaining about lack of ammunition.

Its a little undeserved to be honest. There are no land carnivores large enough to threaten a human which is the really scary stuff imo. All of the really deadly stuff outside of the ocean really would prefer to be as far away from you as possible. So long as you dont go doing dumb stuff like trying to tread softly up on a snake or go sticking your hand into highly dubious places like down strange holes in the ground or around the inside a nice pile of old tires without checking first, its actually a very safe bushland to be in.

The allies found from their own experience with the Blitz that the biggest effect you could have by strategic bombing wasn't strictly targeting the factories, which were becoming more resilient to damage and were very quickly back in production after being bombed. It was in de housing the population. People cant work in industrial areas without proper homes in a homelessness crisis. Kraut did a really good piece on the subject a few years ago. I've watched it a few times.

Not to mention a COLOSSAL failure in supervision. If he was a gear tech how was he left alone with the software long enough to figure it out, let alone either access the databases and print stuff out or sift through loose materials just laying around to take photos. Isn't there a job he's actually meant to be doing? Anyone in a supervisory role should be quartered for this.

Vexler's doing a live Q&A atm if that's anyones cup of tea.

First time poster, long time lurker. Firstly I'd like to thank you all for providing me such an insightful and diverse range of opinions and resources throughout this conflict. Really, its been amazing and this has remained a solid go to place for information. Secondly I'd like to thank Steve and his crew for taking the time to moderate this thread (as well as the many hours playing the amazing games). In regards to the Russian influence discussion I would just like to add that a large part of the damage Russia intends to inflict with this campaign is in having it be so obvious (and often low rent). They stir up one part of society, and they create the illusion that if we stop the influence campaign then the problems might magically go away. The problem is that these are very real perceived issues that are being inflamed here. The campaign itself being so obvious makes it that much harder to rationally address what is at stake here and I feel is a large part of the strategy. Lets not forget that Putin is being an opportunist here. This is no direct strategy with a specific goal in mind. He's aiming to increase the probability that favorable circumstances shake loose on their own.