How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

Girkin got 4 years in the slammer.

With the recruitment of prisoners, will he finally get his command over a Shtrafbat unit?

Good riddance. If/when he gets sent to the hell that is Avdiivka I hope we get a nice FPV of his fascist little face just before the drone snots him. They can identify him later by finding his ratty beard in a tree. 

Fanatics like him were a critical enabler of the initial rebellion and directly responsible for the following decade of murder, rape, pillaging, invasion, torture, pointless stupid war oh and blowing up a Dutch civilian airplane. 

I wish nothing but the absolute worst for that human weasel. 

Edited January 25 by Kinophile

[pintere]

6 hours ago, paxromana said:

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers."
-Socrates

“They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
- Aristotle

I was a High School Teacher for 40 years and my colleagues would occasionally come up with comments about how standards of behaviour/study/anything at all had changed dramatically for the worse ... nope. Not in my experience. And, as you can see, this sort of complaint has, shall we say, a long grey beard and should be put down with extreme prejudice.

YMMV

This needs to be repeated until the end of time. The idea that the next generation is spoilt, incompetent and incapable of handling what their forebears could might sound convincing if it weren’t for the fact that every single generation throughout history seems to have believed it.

And yet, the world continues to spin.

[cesmonkey]

 

[billbindc]

19 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

 

We should be clear about what's happening here...and note I am politically an opponent of and no fan personally of Mitch McConnell: 

 McConnell has been trying very hard to get a deal through that addresses the border 'crisis' and funds Ukraine. Trump has become the nominee in all but name and Trump is threatening Senators who make any deals with Biden that might hurt his chances in November. So, McConnell has realized his own caucus is weak at the knees and a linked deal might not get through. 

His solution is the delink the deals so that Senators can bow to Trump on the border but maybe get Ukraine money through...and he's done it in a way that makes it clear that the fault for all of it lies with Trump. In short, he's maneuvering to keep aid alive while making sure Trump pays a political price for his obstruction. 

[Carolus]

Software target recognition test. Can help a human eye by highlighting suspicious shapes as well as being another step towards autonomous targeting.

 

 

[danfrodo]

deleted

Edited January 25 by danfrodo

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, Eddy said:

Perun did a recent video on recruitment which is a perhaps more detailed look at manpower recruitment 

Here is the first part of a summary 

Summary is generated using this site => summarize.tech: AI-powered video summaries 

Just pop in the YouTube URL and a few seconds later a summary is generated. Saves a lot of time working out whether something is worth watching or not. Or just getting the gist of a video.

Edited for inclusion!

I watched that video a few weeks ago, and that is a pretty good summary.

1 hour ago, Bearstronaut said:

In regards to the US military's recruitment woes there is a major issue that people are overlooking. When I joined up in 2010 the DoD didn't pull your entire medical record at MEPS. If you had been prescribed ADHD medication or antidepressants in high school your recruiter would straight up tell you to lie to the MEPS doctors. If the MEPS doctors couldn't find something wrong with you during your examination at the facility that day they cleared you. Now, they pull your entire medical record so if your parents got a pediatrician to prescribe you meds when you were 14 and had no idea that you were going to try and join the Marines when you turned 20 then you are SOL.

Given that several tens of percent of some high schools are taking one or the other, that is a huge reduction in the available recruiting pool.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

Good riddance. If/when he gets sent to the hell that is Avdiivka I hope we get a nice FPV of his fascist little face just before the drone snots him. They can identify him later by finding his ratty beard in a tree. 

Fanatics like him were a critical enabler of the initial rebellion and directly responsible for the following decade of murder, rape, pillaging, invasion, torture, pointless stupid war oh and blowing up a Dutch civilian airplane. 

I wish nothing but the absolute worst for that human weasel. 

Whether or not he gets sent straight to a storm battalion will be an interesting test of how secure Putin feels. Obviously it would be both convenient, and a great improvement for the whole planet, if he got messily dead in a matter of weeks. On the other hand there are very few people I am aware of as capable of doing a Prigozhin mutiny 2.0.

Edited January 25 by dan/california

[billbindc]

5 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I watched that video a few weeks ago, and that is a pretty good summary.

Given that several tens of percent of some high schools are taking one or the other, that is a huge reduction in the available recruiting pool.

Whether or not he gets sent straight to a storm battalion will be an interesting test of how secure Putin feels. Obviously it would be both convenient, and a great improvement for the whole planet, if he got messily dead in a matter of weeks. On the other hand there are very few people I am aware of as capable of doing a Prigozhin mutiny 2.0.

I would say there's about a zero percent chance of Girkin being allowed out in the wild with any troops. 

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, pintere said:

This needs to be repeated until the end of time. The idea that the next generation is spoilt, incompetent and incapable of handling what their forebears could might sound convincing if it weren’t for the fact that every single generation throughout history seems to have believed it.

That’s all good and well, but ignores the medical, educational and social realities on the ground. The average reading level in the US is 6th grade or so, and public school is significantly worse than it was. It’s not really possible to fail out now. The fattest kids when I was in grade school say 30 years ago would now be the skinniest kid (recall Friends where fat Monica had to be made progressively fatter to size up with reality). And the ADHD med use is kind of nuts.

There may be a silver lining in the ability to play on a smartphone which might crossover to drones, but most kids now have less computer sense than those 20 years ago who were in the sweet spot for learning about computers as you were still exposed to a file system, had to learn how to pirate software, install linux etc. But, a motivated kid can learn more easily now with all the info online.

Now for the UK, I recall a decade ago Sihks were excited about having their own regiment. Seems like they could get plenty of motivated, capable young men and women for that kind of regiment.

Edited January 25 by kimbosbread

[Beleg85]

6 hours ago, paxromana said:

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers."
-Socrates

“They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
- Aristotle

I was a High School Teacher for 40 years and my colleagues would occasionally come up with comments about how standards of behaviour/study/anything at all had changed dramatically for the worse ... nope. Not in my experience. And, as you can see, this sort of complaint has, shall we say, a long grey beard and should be put down with extreme prejudice.

YMMV

Worth to note however that both beforementioned Greeks lived in relatively axiologically stable, slow-paced polities. The overall tempo of communciation, social and technical changes in globalised world rose up dramatically- changes are defining us not within lifespan, but a decade or even faster. We didn't evolve for that (and by "we" I mean social institutions and ways humans  interact)- for example, we still don't know true, long-lasting effects of sexual revolution in the West, especially that it was accompanied by other groundbreaking processes.

Just from this sole fact we shouldn't box all grudges of older men as "grey beard talkngs" and automatically use extreme prejudice here. They may be right on many issues, and changes in wider patterns of human behaviour are often real and empirically measured.

Btw. most Highlander regiments in XIX cent. were technically queers. A propos nothing, but accidently so fitting potentiall Russian narrative, still smeared in sentiments after Crimea War.

https://www.gbnews.com/news/ben-wallace-claims-vladimir-putin-has-gone-full-tonto-claims-uk-can-kick-russias-backside/233373

[MSBoxer]

Could someone please explain to me how recruiting in the UK and US relates to the current conflict in Ukraine?  
I think we have spent enough time on this.  Now if someone did a study on how hamster behavior was affecting recruiting in Russia and Ukraine, I would be all for it, but this discussion is simply a distraction bordering on ideological/political sniping.

[Beleg85]

Back to the topic, sorry if it was posted before: Russians claims that videos and photos circulating lately show their soldiers who managed to crawl through the sewer into Avdiivka for several hundred meters. Reportedly 150 men did managed to pass Ukrainian lines this way (nasty job, considering winter) and capture positions "Carska Ochota", "Zenit" and part of woods. This is just southern spur of the town, but now they have at least some urban foothold.

 

 

[masc]

16 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

Attempt to change direction of thread..

Way back we discussed the striking difference between amounts of Russian soldiers coming from big cities (almost none) and those from rural area's (loads).

And I stumbled on this surprising video from a guy who checked out British Army demographics and recruitment-issues.

Do not be fooled by the title of his video, this is not a crazy rightwing nutcase or woke-hating dumbass.

His research and investigation are quite factual as far as I can see, and the title of his video is based on the fact that the UK government and Army for years and years tried to make the Army as inclusive as possible by making it easier for women, LBTH, minorities etc, ("Woke influence") to join up, but he discovered that it did NOT work out as planned. And partially because of that, the British army has huge problems with getting enough recruits/volunteers.

My understanding is that this problem is also playing up in the Netherlands, and I suspect in more West-European countries. (No idea if it is a problem in the USA). It has a possible profound effect on the near-future strenght of (some) Nato-countries. Which connects this issue directly to the Ukraine-Russo war, because of escalatory possibilities.

If you do think his conclusions are unjust or too far fetched, please let me know.

I'm gonna post it again for posterity.

 

This guy is uncredible at best but comes across as a "neutral" critic of the west/Ukraine in a poor attempt to seem unbiased. I don't know why people bother linking him.

[billbindc]

 

You have to admire how well McConnell plays the game. The 'leak' from yesterday is already chastening the anti-Ukraine aid folks. 

[Battlefront.com]

46 minutes ago, masc said:

I'm gonna post it again for posterity.

 

This guy is uncredible at best but comes across as a "neutral" critic of the west/Ukraine in a poor attempt to seem unbiased. I don't know why people bother linking him.

My BS/Clickbait detector must be pretty good because I concluded the guy was a waste of space after listening to him for about 15 seconds.  Didn't even bother looking back at his history of postings.

Anyway, as MSBoxer pointed out, this was only tangentially relevant to this thread to start with and it's gone way off path.  Time to leave it behind now that we've given it a good thrashing.

The good that comes out of this is to help us all better recognize YouTubers who pretend to be sources of real information, but in fact are just there to get clicks and/or push an agenda.

Steve

[Anthony P.]

1 hour ago, masc said:

This guy is uncredible at best but comes across as a "neutral" critic of the west/Ukraine in a poor attempt to seem unbiased. I don't know why people bother linking him.

"Wokeism is DESTROYING the British military" says real life "soy boy meme" man who's never served (don't even have to look him up or watch his nonsense, he's that obvious a self published "expert".

[Carolus]

 

Looks like a massive shaped charge on this little bugger. 

Unopposed approach, but it still beats risking to send a sapper team out there.

[cesmonkey]

 

[Vet 0369]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Back to the topic, sorry if it was posted before: Russians claims that videos and photos circulating lately show their soldiers who managed to crawl through the sewer into Avdiivka for several hundred meters. Reportedly 150 men did managed to pass Ukrainian lines this way (nasty job, considering winter) and capture positions "Carska Ochota", "Zenit" and part of woods. This is just southern spur of the town, but now they have at least some urban foothold.

 

 

Believe it or not, this type of Soviet movement wasn’t unknown during WWII. If anyone here has ever played Avalon Hill’s “Squad Leader,” (the Great Grandfather of Combat Mission) sewer movement was a method of moving in Stalingrad missions, so it was most likely an actual thing!

[JonS]

It was a thing in CM at one point, too

(It was a bit ... odd though, so better off gone)

Edited January 25 by JonS

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Vet 0369 said:

Believe it or not, this type of Soviet movement wasn’t unknown during WWII. If anyone here has ever played Avalon Hill’s “Squad Leader,” (the Great Grandfather of Combat Mission) sewer movement was a method of moving in Stalingrad missions, so it was most likely an actual thing!

Sewers were used in Stalingrad, IWW, medieval (in Middle East sometimes quanats were used for this purpose) and antiquity- basically whenever possible to crawl into defended area. During Waraw Uprising it was chief communciation and transportation network, used by thousands of people on fairly regular basis. What is different here is Avdiivka is small town and it is strange they didn't use it before. Or that Ukrainians didn't notice such broad channel going under their nose.

Overall, given how static frontlines are, I wouldn't be surprised if we see artificial tunnels soon being sapped even in countryside and possibly revival of this dirty kind of warfare. Enemy drones may make work difficult, though, and definitelly easier to detect larger sappings.

[Carolus]

 

Since we have been talking about the will to sacrifice for your nation a few times...

 

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Sewers were used in Stalingrad, IWW, medieval (in Middle East sometimes quanats were used for this purpose) and antiquity- basically whenever possible to crawl into defended area. During Waraw Uprising it was chief communciation and transportation network, used by thousands of people on fairly regular basis. What is different here is Avdiivka is small town and it is strange they didn't use it before. Or that Ukrainians didn't notice such broad channel going under their nose.

Overall, given how static frontlines are, I wouldn't be surprised if we see artificial tunnels soon being sapped even in countryside and possibly revival of this dirty kind of warfare. Enemy drones may make work difficult, though, and definitelly easier to detect larger sappings.

There have already been reported incidents of Russians tunneling towards Ukrainian positions.  I forget where, but it didn't seem that it was based on preexisting infrastructure.

Steve

[JonS]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

My BS/Clickbait detector must be pretty good because I concluded the guy was a waste of space after listening to him for about 15 seconds.

hah, well, I saved myself even those 15 seconds

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, JonS said:

hah, well, I saved myself even those 15 seconds

And some of us need all the seconds we have left….