How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Machor]

18 hours ago, panzermartin said:

But what are the feelings towards NATO nowadays in Turkey.

You are reiterating my point: The problem isn't with NATO and Turkey; it's with Erdoğan and Islamism.

Ever since Erdoğan was elected out of obscurity to become the mayor of Istanbul with the promise of converting the Hagia Sophia into a mosque [competing votes were split between two centre-right and two centre-left parties that squabbled among each other] and stated on record: "Democracy is like a tram. You get on where you need to, and you get off where you need to," it was obvious that him and the Islamists had to be nipped in the bud. Instead, both within Turkey and internationally, various factions thought they could draw him to their side, until he became all-powerful. When I stated that Erdoğan was bad news at a leading US university in 2008, I was called an 'elitist' and accused of opposing 'democratization'. Everyone was talking about 'Liberal Islam', and telling me Erdoğan's Islamists were just an Islamic counterpart to Europe's Christian Democrats. If we have made any progress at all, I hope that discourse has now died, and there will be zero tolerance should Islamism rear its ugly head anywhere else. Some Russian (Solzhenitsyn?) said "Russia was crucified on the cross to show the world the evil of Communism;" Turkey was impaled on the stake to show the world the evil of Islamism.

RE: Tensions in the Aegean

The danger is that Erdoğan has every reason to start a phony war, and then use it as an excuse to declare martial law and cancel elections. He does not even need the Turkish military to engineer a provocation since, like a certain someone, he now has his own military organization, who swear allegiance personally to him.

Now, facing Erdoğan's machinations, we have the Greek military who, along with a certain segment of Greece's ruling elite that they are close with, would also love to see Erdoğan start a phony war with Greece. When Erdoğan tried to get cozy with Russia, they responded by killing 37 Turkish soldiers; when he then tried to switch to China, they demanded Turkey extradite all Uyghurs. Therefore, should Turkey lose its ties with the West as well, it would end up more isolated than North Korea. With this reasoning, even if the Greek military does not engineer the first provocation, it would gladly reply to any provocation by Erdoğan with an escalatory provocation, and Erdoğan knows this as well. Thus, you have two actors who would both benefit from a phony war, but these actors aren't nation-states.

[Machor]

10 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Two particularly stupid things that unfortunately are too baked in to ever change is our clocks (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours??) and degrees (360??  wtf?).  arbitrary, hard to work with numbers.  We are so used to these that we don't realize just how stupid these are.

 

10 hours ago, Huba said:

The way we split year into parts is also not the smartest

I see two fine gentlemen with a bone to pick with Sargon the Great. 

[Machor]

10 hours ago, Grigb said:

Not only their voice acting skill is poor, they did not say syka, blyat, na hui, ebat or pidori. They said once zahyichim him and that's all. This is not how Russian soldiers talk.

@LongLeftFlank

Unfortunately, I'm not as optimistic as you are: the moan that you can hear when they jerk away the wounded Ukrainian soldier sounds pretty genuine. And, since they were already discussing executing him on the video, they may have just tortured him for intel and executed later.

I have seen plenty of confirmed combat footage taken by Russian soldiers both in this war and previously that had little or no swearing. It cannot be the sole criterion for authenticity.

I'm also left asking: If the video is a fake, then why? It would have taken some effort to fake everything in the video, so there should be a purpose. Killing two Ukrainian soldiers is hardly a propaganda blow in the scale of this war. And if the purpose was to show Russian soldiers taking prisoners, they undid that by suggesting to execute the prisoner on record.

[Machor]

Huba already posted this, but there's now more info on the first M777 loss:

We have the second incident since the start of the war where a Su-25 was hit by MANPADS and made it back:

And a Ukrainian MiG-29 still operational against all odds:

 

[Aragorn2002]

2 hours ago, fireship4 said:

They do I think, if they believe in anything at all.  And you don't ask someone to be grateful if you save their life, you do it or you don't do it.

But you don't expect the person who's life you just saved, to tell you that you suck.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

That just has "Target" painted all over it, and for a technically advanced opponent, the lasers and radar are a screaming beacon saying "Yo, here I am!!!". The sensor system needs to be more distributed, which is at least plausible now with the speed and size of modern computing.  Basically everything on the field needs to be feeding data to a system that integrates it all to create Borg spotting.  Because it is, but without quite doing the implants.

Counter UAV will be provided by a distributed system that has multiple sensor types and multiple response systems, so there won't be a single "anti-UAV vehicle" that can be taken out to make the rest easy targets.  Counter drone would be "managed" from behind the lines using data gathered from everybody.   Counter UAV fire can be a mix of lasers, projectiles, RF interference, and mechanical (e.g. net dragged into the props), depending on the UAV and who's around.  Lasers are nice, but the kind of high energy lasers needed to take out UAVs at long range probably aren't going to be small for a while, will probably be fairly fragile, and are potentially big beacons.

 

Every soldier and vehicle should eventually have at least one drone that's coupled to their VR goggles.  The VR goggles will mix a straight through view of the world with the Borg spotting above, combined with eye tracking, so that when the soldier looks somewhere they get a fusion of direct view, a personal drone view, and the overlay from the fusion system telling them what's behind any obstacle in the direct view.  And they'll be able to target things that are out of direct LOS because the integrated system will be like Longbow on steroids - they'll target the tank before it ever knows they're there.  At least if the counter UAV systems worked.

 

More like Nicolas II...

I fully agree that everything needs to feed back to a networked command system that produces a unit/force wide Borg spotting picture, but against higher speed threats I don't think even current/near future networks are going to be able to pass the sensor info back to a centralized system and chew on it.  Doubly so in an environment that has an enormous amount of energy bouncing around the entire electromagnetic spectrum, most of it with ill intent. Just to be clear the system needs to deal with both drones, ATGMs, and maybe even main gun rounds. Current APS systems basically assume an intercept within a few tens of yards at most, and that the remains of the missile will impact the protected vehicle. That envelope needs to be pushed out further if it possibly can be, so that mission critical systems are not degraded by the fragments of intercepted missiles. Maybe retain the current Trophy style systems as a final line of  defense while the RWS mounted system engages threats further out. Jamming these systems, HARM missiles, balancing the risk of radars on vs radar off, is all going to be part of the game. There are just going to have to be a lot more layers in the protective bubble if you are going to keep your vehicles alive. I really think is great advantage to a heavy unit that pushes as much capability forward to the line of contact as possible. But it needs real modeling of different possibilities and systems. And this whole mess has to be coordinated with friendly drone systems. Somebody is going to have to build real prototypes of different architectures, and shoot real missiles at them. Maybe this problem really is too hard, and the height of military technology is going to be a REALLY high tech gillie suit.

But maybe we can make a few guesses when the next iteration of the game comes out. 

 

[fireship4]

43 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

But you don't expect the person who's life you just saved, to tell you that you suck.

Alright metaphors can be finnicky, so either I can say 'they are dead' or 'some of them died, and the ones you saved are telling you that you suck', 'it's too late for the ones you didn't save to tell you how much you suck' etc. etc. but the point is, who cares how grateful they are?  Either they should be helped or not, either it is right or not.  Saying they are not grateful enough suggests it isn't being done for the right reason in the first place, or that those reasons are too lightly held.

We are talking after all about life and death, the choice whether to help a people under attack from a backward authoritarian cancer state, about whether you believe that is your duty to do or not.  Popular opinion currently judges German and French (and to a lesser extent the West's) efforts as not good enough, not in line with their words and the principles they are expected to hold.  Asking them to be grateful... it's in poor taste.

Edited June 11, 2022 by fireship4

[Aragorn2002]

28 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

Alright metaphors can be finnicky, so either I can say 'they are dead' or 'some of them died, and the ones you saved are telling you that you suck', 'it's too late for the ones you didn't save to tell you how much you suck' etc. etc. but the point is, who cares how grateful they are?  Either they should be helped or not, either it is right or not.  Saying they are not grateful enough suggests it isn't being done for the right reason in the first place, or that those reasons are too lightly held.

First of all I'm talking about Kraze, not about the whole Ukrainian nation, I hope. Secondly, the gratitude of Ukraine towards the West will be very important once all this is over. If they only see themselves as victims, who were left on their own devices while fighting for their life, we will have another Poland or Hungary on our hands. Another candidate for a new Warsaw Pact (this time without the Russians) of Visegrad-countries holding a grudge against the rest of the world.

Btw, what does this mean?

«Универсальный пульт, положи на док-станцию» - Валерий

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Ts4EVER]

Some of you here have a weird impression of Germany, I have to say...

You know what the Germans, at the end of the day, wanted in WW2? A nice, cozy, USA-type lifestyle.

What did WW2 teach them? You don't get that by war, you get it by selling everybody cars and cheating on the occasional emissions test. This is basically the German modern mindset summed up.

They don't want to pay good money for weapons, especially considering that if there is a WW3 involving NATO, it would probably be the end of the world anyway. And while the current media blitz was quite effective, they don't REALLY care about some eastern european country that they ultimately view as backwards and corrupt. At best they view those people as possibly cheap labour, just make sure to keep an eye on that family silver great-grandpa got for cheap from the Jews!

For Germany the whole affair is a big inconvenience. Except for the sanction effects and some refugees, the only real way it would massively hurt Germany is if someone annoys the Russians enough to end the world, which is what Scholz wants to avoid. Other than that, what mostly changes is that they have to get their gas from elsewhere now and are more dependent on the US than on Russia. Which is fine for now, but just wait until the next election, when there is a good chance that the borderline subhuman rednecks, who don't believe in evolution because they are at the beginning of it, vote someone into office who may as well be Putin.

And as for paying for weapons: As I said, history has taught them that this is ultimately a fool's errand and it is easy to come to the conclusion that the only thing you get by buying, let's say, a bunch of new fighter jets, is a better view of the mushroom clouds once things kick off.

So, in conclusion, I don't know why people are so shocked by Germany's stance.

[fireship4]

24 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

For Germany the whole affair is a big inconvenience. Except for the sanction effects and some refugees, the only real way it would massively hurt Germany is if someone annoys the Russians enough to end the world, which is what Scholz wants to avoid. Other than that, what mostly changes is that they have to get their gas from elsewhere now and are more dependent on the US than on Russia. Which is fine for now, but just wait until the next election, when there is a good chance that the borderline subhuman rednecks, who don't believe in evolution because they are at the beginning of it, vote someone into office who may as well be Putin.

And some have a weird impression of the South in the US... borderline subhuman?  Because they voted for Trump?  Since that kind of language defeats the entire idea of bothering with a democratic system in the first place - that people can have their ideas changed (and less relevant, that they are the best judge of how politics is affecting them), and it is ideas that are the problem to be dealt with, and that the idea that people can be subhuman is more problematic than Trumpism, I don't think I need to deal with the point any further.

If Germany sees this only in terms of short term economic benefit and loss, and sees only death in resisting Russia (not to mention nuclear power for perhaps the same reason) then it deserves all the criticism it gets.  Do their politicians understand that Russia is opposed to democracy and would happily ride all the way back to the Reichstag if they thought they could do it?

 

25 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

If they only see themselves as victims, who were left on their own devices while fighting for their life...

Then let's not do that.

 

25 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Btw, what does this mean?

«Универсальный пульт, положи на док-станцию» - Валерий

It's a quote by a Russian interior decorator.

Edited June 11, 2022 by fireship4

[Ts4EVER]

3 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

And some have a weird impression of the South in the US... borderline subhuman?  Because they voted for Trump?  Since that kind of language defeats the entire idea of bothering with a democratic system in the first place - that people can have their ideas changed (and less relevant, that they are the best judge of how politics is affecting them), and it is ideas that are the problem to be dealt with, and that the idea that people can be subhuman is more problematic than Trumpism, I don't think I need to deal with the point any further.

 

Yes, that was my point. This is not my view, but the impression I am getting from many of my fellow countrymen.

[dan/california]

24 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

First of all I'm talking about Kraze, not about the whole Ukrainian nation, I hope. Secondly, the gratitude of Ukraine towards the West will be very important once all this is over. If they only see themselves as victims, who were left on their own devices while fighting for their life, we will have another Poland or Hungary on our hands. Another candidate for a new Warsaw Pact (this time without the Russians) of Visegrad-countries holding a grudge against the rest of the world.

Btw, what does this mean?

«Универсальный пульт, положи на док-станцию» - Валерий

 

So we COULD admit that the only likely opponent for a land war in Europe is currently wrecking itself in eastern Ukraine, and send Ukrainians everything they actually need, so they can finish wrecking it without losing a whole generation of fighting age men. What they need is about a third of the hardware in Europe. If the Russians leave Ukraine just beaten they are not coming back for a while. So unless you anticipate shipping most of your army to Taiwan sometime soon, The only real limit on how much hardware you can send them is how much you have. And if the Russians do completely lose their minds and attack Poland or the Baltics, it is Pretty clear their air force wouldn't last a day, and the rest of their army wouldn't last two more when GBUs started raining down in quantity. There is just no rational reason not send the Ukrainians everything they can physically use. Starting with the entire artillery park.

[fireship4]

35 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

This is not my view, but the impression I am getting from many of my fellow countrymen.

Fair enough, it's the subhuman bit I have a problem with to be clear - to clarify a little I do believe that there are people who are so far from being open-minded on some topics that they are almost unreachable, and that is a problem (which may lead you for example to choose not to allow them to come and live in your country) but that is due to ideas they have or do not have, not some inherant deficiency.

I'll get back to you when David Deutsch publishes his forthcoming book on what is often called 'irrationality'.

 

22 minutes ago, dan/california said:

So we COULD admit that the only likely opponent for a land war in Europe is currently wrecking itself in eastern Ukraine

I agree more or less, when I hear about countries saying they can't give this or that because it would weaken their armed forces in case of conflict, OK I get it, but in some sense that conflict is here, now, and you either fight Russia when it is weak or wait until it's strong.  You could say they are holding back in case Russia fully mobilises and actually attacks Europe proper... but I would take a lot of convincing.

I guess I don't know enough about Russia to say how much of a danger it would be post Putin/Putinism, but if they aren't defeated we might not find out.  I have a feeling that a lot of things will be better in the world in general if that 'palace of ****' as it was recently called is finally washed into the sewer.

Edited June 11, 2022 by fireship4

[G.I. Joe]

14 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Incredible.

Haiduk's in for a hell of a surprise when he gets back on his pc...

FUNDED!

$1500 to get him a new laptop. Amazing. Thank you, everyone who donated.

 

Thanks for organizing this! Hope all goes well. Definitely a fitting thank you for Haiduk's unique contributions to the Fellowship of the Thread...

[Aragorn2002]

47 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

 

It's a quote by a Russian interior decorator.

Yes. But what does it say?

Edited June 11, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

I fully agree that everything needs to feed back to a networked command system that produces a unit/force wide Borg spotting picture, but against higher speed threats I don't think even current/near future networks are going to be able to pass the sensor info back to a centralized system and chew on it.  Doubly so in an environment that has an enormous amount of energy bouncing around the entire electromagnetic spectrum, most of it with ill intent. Just to be clear the system needs to deal with both drones, ATGMs, and maybe even main gun rounds. Current APS systems basically assume an intercept within a few tens of yards at most, and that the remains of the missile will impact the protected vehicle. That envelope needs to be pushed out further if it possibly can be, so that mission critical systems are not degraded by the fragments of intercepted missiles. Maybe retain the current Trophy style systems as a final line of  defense while the RWS mounted system engages threats further out. Jamming these systems, HARM missiles, balancing the risk of radars on vs radar off, is all going to be part of the game. There are just going to have to be a lot more layers in the protective bubble if you are going to keep your vehicles alive. I really think is great advantage to a heavy unit that pushes as much capability forward to the line of contact as possible. But it needs real modeling of different possibilities and systems. And this whole mess has to be coordinated with friendly drone systems. Somebody is going to have to build real prototypes of different architectures, and shoot real missiles at them. Maybe this problem really is too hard, and the height of military technology is going to be a REALLY high tech gillie suit.

But maybe we can make a few guesses when the next iteration of the game comes out. 

 

Yes - higher speed threats like gun rounds and ATGMs you'd deal with differently than drones and tanks that haven't fired yet.  The threats all have different characteristics.  But if you can get a detailed battlefield picture at the right ranges, basically at least to the 5 km of longer range ATGMs, you can mitigate a lot of those threats before the high speed rounds are even coming in.  The thing I'd want to avoid is having a central "castle" target that's providing the anti-drone capability, because once it's gone you're back to square one.  But at the speeds drones move you can do things like track and correlate radio and thermal signatures from different sensors to triangulate and track them.  Similar to MLAT mode of ADS-B, where the difference is that for MLAT the target is going out of its way to make its signal clear and tracking a hostile UAV would require some correlation of signals across devices, particularly if it can go autonomous (and silent) once it's near a target.

[Aragorn2002]

47 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

Then let's not do that.

 

That's my point. We don't. Hence my irritation about remarks which suggest the opposite. Get it?

[SteelRain]

7 hours ago, Huba said:

Solovyov and his lackeys comment on Putin's "Peter the Great Speech". Unusually disgusting even by their standards:

 

Nice insight. Everytime the "guests" of that numb nut Solovyov look intimidated to a point that, as soon as the cameras are of, the hot air venting **** in his shiny dress will beat the **** out of them. 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by SteelRain

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, Ts4EVER said:

Some of you here have a weird impression of Germany, I have to say...

You know what the Germans, at the end of the day, wanted in WW2? A nice, cozy, USA-type lifestyle.

What did WW2 teach them? You don't get that by war, you get it by selling everybody cars and cheating on the occasional emissions test. This is basically the German modern mindset summed up.

They don't want to pay good money for weapons, especially considering that if there is a WW3 involving NATO, it would probably be the end of the world anyway. And while the current media blitz was quite effective, they don't REALLY care about some eastern european country that they ultimately view as backwards and corrupt. At best they view those people as possibly cheap labour, just make sure to keep an eye on that family silver great-grandpa got for cheap from the Jews!

For Germany the whole affair is a big inconvenience. Except for the sanction effects and some refugees, the only real way it would massively hurt Germany is if someone annoys the Russians enough to end the world, which is what Scholz wants to avoid. Other than that, what mostly changes is that they have to get their gas from elsewhere now and are more dependent on the US than on Russia. Which is fine for now, but just wait until the next election, when there is a good chance that the borderline subhuman rednecks, who don't believe in evolution because they are at the beginning of it, vote someone into office who may as well be Putin.

And as for paying for weapons: As I said, history has taught them that this is ultimately a fool's errand and it is easy to come to the conclusion that the only thing you get by buying, let's say, a bunch of new fighter jets, is a better view of the mushroom clouds once things kick off.

So, in conclusion, I don't know why people are so shocked by Germany's stance.

Thank you for this insight. Utter nonsense, but very enjoyable.

[fireship4]

 

27 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

That's my point. We don't. Hence my irritation about remarks which suggest the opposite. Get it?

 

On 6/10/2022 at 7:23 AM, Aragorn2002 said:

"In reality Berlin is supplying large amounts of weapons; not as much as the US, but comparable to other European countries. Experts say Germany ranks somewhere in the middle." according to the BBC. It's a safe bet Germany will have paid  the most and Poland will have profited the most of all European countries when the dust has settled.

I think the pressure upon Germany by Poland (as usual) and Ukraine is more political/financial than something else and aimed at weakening the German positon within EU/NATO for future use. Preparing those Leopards and Marders will take months and months. And will take away much needed production and maintenance capacity that the Bundeswehr badly needs itself now. The Bundeswehr is in full swing at the moment and not a day too soon.

Apart from that the German economy can't manage without the Russian energy yet. Hard fact of life. And if the German economy goes down, the whole of Europe goes with it.

https://www.bundeswehr.de/de/organisation/heer/aktuelles/einsatzverband-besteht-feuertaufe-fuer-litauen-5443686

It's not the remarks which suggest it, it's the popular consensus (on which I welcome debate), with the M270 being a recent case in point.  Germany is not unique in receiving criticism on this front, and as you deemed them the most democratic state in Europe they should be able to handle it.  Accusing Ukraine of playing politics to weaken Germany's position in Europe seems a bit of a stretch, given the fact they are currently on fire.

Measuring arms supplied in terms of cost ignores how useful they are on the battlefield, and calling Germany's dependence on Russian natural gas a hard fact of life is a bit strange, seeing as it was a choice.

[Aragorn2002]

8 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Here is a good explanation why sending the Leo-2 to the Ukraine is possibly not a good idea. Leopard-1 outdated would better deal with the infrastructure. 

 

Thank you for that. So refreshing to hear an opinion from someone who actually knows what he's talking about.

[fireship4]

29 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Thank you for that. So refreshing to hear an opinion from someone who actually knows what he's talking about.

The video suggests it might be worth it depending how many are sent.  The weight argument (in short the Leopard 2A4 weighs too much compared to T-72 etc.) is based entirely on general restrictions set by an international container transport and logistics service provider, not by an assessment of logistical factors in time of war.  In any case the Ukrainians want them... saying 'you don't need them they are too heavy' is a little unconvincing.

A useful article on what heavy weapons have been sent to Ukraine despite being over a month out of date: https://newlinesinstitute.org/ukraine/what-heavy-weapons-the-west-has-and-hasnt-sent-ukraine/

Edited June 11, 2022 by fireship4

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

You know what the Germans, at the end of the day, wanted in WW2? A nice, cozy, USA-type lifestyle.

What did WW2 teach them? You don't get that by war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States

[Huba]

20 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

The video suggests it might be worth it depending how many are sent.  The weight argument (in short the Leopard 2A4 weighs too much compared to T-72 etc.) is based entirely on general restrictions set by an international container transport and logistics service provider, not by an assessment of logistical factors in time of war.  In any case the Ukrainians want them... saying 'you don't need them they are too heavy' is a little unconvincing.

A useful article on what heavy weapons have been sent to Ukraine despite being over a month out of date: https://newlinesinstitute.org/ukraine/what-heavy-weapons-the-west-has-and-hasnt-sent-ukraine/

That exactly, poor technical condition and low numbers make the Spanish offer not practical, yet politically it might sill make sense as a precedence - after that, sending Leo1s or M1s might be easier to sell. 

At the moment though, there are more ex-Soviet types to be found, but only in form of swaps, no freebies available anymore.

[Aragorn2002]

32 minutes ago, Huba said:

That exactly, poor technical condition and low numbers make the Spanish offer not practical, yet politically it might sill make sense as a precedence - after that, sending Leo1s or M1s might be easier to sell. 

At the moment though, there are more ex-Soviet types to be found, but only in form of swaps, no freebies available anymore.

Precedence? If Leo 2's are send, Leo1's won't be a problem at all. But it will still be Germany that will have made the decision to send tanks to Ukraine. Spanish Leo 2's (all 10 of them...) or a couple of hundred Leo 1's (are that many available in the German depots?). 

What do you exactly mean with in form of swaps?

Edited June 11, 2022 by Aragorn2002