Nastypastie
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Posts posted by Nastypastie
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Anyone else feeling that the RU info ops are at a fever pitch right now?
On Youtube I'm seeing videos from once relatively benign sources like Balkan Mapping, that have turned decidedly pro Russian in the last year or so. Daily video gets released and its, as expected, music and everything, glorifying the push into Kharkiv. Whats more interesting is that within 30 minutes of release there are hundreds of comments both in Russian and English, speaking like the Russians have already captured Kharkiv city, destroyed the entire Ukrainian army and will be in Berlin in 80 days (not even joking, that was an actual comment).
I've even seen something similar happen with a piece from the Hindustan times, claiming that the Russians were advancing Sumy (when they are clearly not). I mean, not typically my go to for news lol, and it is right wing, but its still a relatively reputable news organization.
So what is actually happening here? Are the Russians just cranking up the algorithms?
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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.
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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).
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1 hour ago, Hapless said:
Complete and utter failure is a bit harsh- the defenders lost 400,000 men and voluntarily abandoned the whole area because they believed it was untenable.
There's an interesting perspective element here though re the current the conflict- who won the Battle of Sievierodonetsk? The side that got punished the most or the side that was evicted? A pyrrhic victory is still a victory... right? Unless it's the other side.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.
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There's a new Kraut if anyone likes his stuff.
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1 hour ago, Hapless said:
If we're looking at a battlespace where high signature vehicles are prohibitively vulnerable and low signature infantry is simultaenously survivable and lethal (via calling for precision fires), maybe the way forward is less to try and proof AFVs and more to boost infantry mobility and load carrying ability.
Or, in short: Heinlein probably nailed it.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.
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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.
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1 hour ago, dan/california said:
I have been pondering what happens when a ship is attacked by literally a thousand FPV style drones. They would probably have to be autonomous, due to band-width. But how may RPG-7 class hits could a ship take?
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.
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8 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
I meant modern tactical games. Drones aint no fun. Heck yes CMCW is fun! Except 1979 is tough as americans. I love M60s but they struggle against the soviet tanks. And those awful M113-TOW things -- Damn them, they never spot first and never hit anything. I'm in a battle 1979 battle right now and not doing well -- against the AI. That's embarrassing.
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.
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13 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:
I don't know the credibility of the source, but this is being repeated by some Russian telegrammers:
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.
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11 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:
Suppose the Ukrainians fired some cluster munitions they captured from Russian forces. Would there be any observable differences between those and DPICM?
Looks exactly like these from December. Israeli supposedly.
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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.
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41 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
AIM-9 !
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.
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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Are those termite bombs effective against troops in apartment blocks? Or is it a sign that the Russians now just firing whatever shells they have left?
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.
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2 hours ago, TheVulture said:
With Australia's reputation I'd call that a win. If I randomly dug a hole in the ground in Australia, I'd expect to unearth some kind of invertebrate venomous enough to kill a small elephant by looking at it.
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.
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48 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
Now that I've cooled down a bit, I think I can address this. Basically, Russian military thinking is behind the times.
Back when long range bombing first became a thing it was not immediately obvious that terror bombing couldn't break peoples' will to fight, and it certainly wasn't obvious that it would actually harden their resolve to fight. Everyone (not just the Germans, but the Americans and British too) thought that you could potentially break a population's will to fight with terror bombing (although even back then you would think that the moral imperative of not killing civilians should have been enough). It took far longer than it should have for the United States to figure out that terror bombing not only doesn't work, but is counter-productive.
There should have been enough data for us to figure that out in WW2, but ineffective bombing campaigns seem to have been something of a blind spot for us. It didn't help that Japan surrendered shortly after getting nuked (even in that case, some fresh perspectives are shedding light on the possibility that it wasn't the nukes that convinced them to surrender). We kept conducting terror bombing through WW2, Korea, and even as late as Vietnam. In the Gulf War we finally made a concerted effort to avoid hitting civilians, with the only civilians killed in bombings being from high profile accidents.
The problem today is that Russian/Soviet military history is not our military history. They didn't fight the same wars we fought, or were on very different fronts, and their officers didn't hang out with our officers very much to share experiences. So they didn't learn the same lessons we learned, in the same order, or in the same way*. And we weren't exactly eager to share lessons with the Soviets during the Cold War. Their thinking on bombing has advanced, generously, to about the point we were at in Vietnam.
* Another example of this is that we figured out back in WW1 that decentralized control (what we call 'mission command') was the correct approach to C2 in modern warfare. Meanwhile the Russians still use a more centralized (almost Napoleonic, but with radios) style of command, in which the word of the commanding officer is law.
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.
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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.
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Vexler's doing a live Q&A atm if that's anyones cup of tea.
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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.
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