How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

It’s called Starshield, and the US doesn’t have an alternative launcher that can put up the necessary volume of satellites. Everybody else is at least a decade behind (Chinese, Blue Origin, Rocketlab). I don’t think the US government is capable of operating an maintaining a system like Starlink themselves, honestly. So you just gotta pay SpaceX.

Besides, the whole dream of working at SpaceX is being on the bleeding edge and taking humanity to the stars. Starlink.gov would not get those people at all.

Not really accidental, it’s the logical consequence of realizing you have a ton of extra payload room and not enough paying customers. So what can you put in space that will make you money?

Perun did an EXCELLENT talk on the economics and logistics of deploying things into space.  As you say, there is SpaceX and then there's everybody else trailing very far behind.

Steve

[sburke]

19 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Perun did an EXCELLENT talk on the economics and logistics of deploying things into space.  As you say, there is SpaceX and then there's everybody else trailing very far behind.

Steve

My alien overlords would like to register their disagreement with the above.

[sburke]

oops.  Looks like the Central Bank of Russia may want to update their figures and planning

Major Russian Ally Deals a Blow to Putin by Cutting Off Oil Revenue (msn.com)

Saudi Arabia announced plans to increase its oil production, abandoning the previously sought price of $100 per barrel.

This decision is a significant move that could impact Russia's economy and comes in the wake of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions were aimed at diminishing Russia’s war capabilities.  

Saudi Arabia, a key ally of Russia within the OPEC group, is making this shift despite previous production cuts intended to stabilize oil prices.

The increase in oil output is anticipated to lower global oil prices, directly affecting Russia, which relies heavily on oil revenue to finance its military operations in Ukraine.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, emphasized that oil and gas remain crucial to Russia's budget.

While Russia has adapted to sanctions and managed to boost its revenues, a substantial decline in global oil prices would exert additional pressure on its budget. With Saudi Arabia ramping up production, the likelihood of lower prices increases, which could cripple Russia's economic stability.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia faces competitive pressures from non-OPEC oil producers like the United States, as well as weakening demand from China.

 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, sburke said:

oops.  Looks like the Central Bank of Russia may want to update their figures and planning

Major Russian Ally Deals a Blow to Putin by Cutting Off Oil Revenue (msn.com)

Saudi Arabia announced plans to increase its oil production, abandoning the previously sought price of $100 per barrel.

This decision is a significant move that could impact Russia's economy and comes in the wake of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions were aimed at diminishing Russia’s war capabilities.  

Saudi Arabia, a key ally of Russia within the OPEC group, is making this shift despite previous production cuts intended to stabilize oil prices.

The increase in oil output is anticipated to lower global oil prices, directly affecting Russia, which relies heavily on oil revenue to finance its military operations in Ukraine.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, emphasized that oil and gas remain crucial to Russia's budget.

While Russia has adapted to sanctions and managed to boost its revenues, a substantial decline in global oil prices would exert additional pressure on its budget. With Saudi Arabia ramping up production, the likelihood of lower prices increases, which could cripple Russia's economic stability.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia faces competitive pressures from non-OPEC oil producers like the United States, as well as weakening demand from China.

 

Another reminder that Putin does not control some pretty important variables.  When it comes to preserving autocracies, it's every Prince and President from himself.

Steve

[dan/california]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Careful now. That is a slippery slope and the kind of stunt places like China would pull. I am not sure what the solution is (a US military Starlink?) But forced federal ownership rarely works out well.

 

49 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

It’s called Starshield, and the US doesn’t have an alternative launcher that can put up the necessary volume of satellites. Everybody else is at least a decade behind (Chinese, Blue Origin, Rocketlab). I don’t think the US government is capable of operating an maintaining a system like Starlink themselves, honestly. So you just gotta pay SpaceX.

Besides, the whole dream of working at SpaceX is being on the bleeding edge and taking humanity to the stars. Starlink.gov would not get those people at all.

Not really accidental, it’s the logical consequence of realizing you have a ton of extra payload room and not enough paying customers. So what can you put in space that will make you money?

 

It just seems like problem when the guy who owns arguably the most strategic company in the U.S. is flagrantly nuts, and picking political sides while he is at it. AND he is financially dependent on both the Chinese and the Saudis.

 

 

[Carolus]

2 hours ago, FancyCat said:

 

This is actually huge.

Russia is still getting a lot of its revenue from oil exports, regardless of whether its "official sales" or getting around the price cap the West is trying to enforce on Russian oil.

Oil prices dropping means less revenue.

I wonder when Putin is going to start to pump his personal wealth into the state finances to stabilize. Afaik he is one of the richest men on the planets, a multi-billionaire in $$$ and almost trillionaire in rubels, though he owns most of his stuff "indirectly". He could finance a good chunk of the country out of his own pocket for a bit.

Edited Friday at 09:33 PM by Carolus
typos

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ukraine-isnt-ready-for-the-pro-putin-republican-party-zelensky-trump

Ukraine Isn’t Ready for the Pro-Putin GOP

Trump’s worldview has more in common with Putin’s than with any democrat’s.

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY made a couple of unforced errors in the last few weeks. They were all small things, the kind of missteps we all make occasionally, and even on the world stage, they might have gone unnoticed. But the Ukrainian leader had no idea what he was up against—a Republican party determined to turn him and the global conflict in Ukraine into this cycle’s political football.

Zelensky and his team had been working for months to cultivate Donald Trump and his entourage. It wasn’t just, as Zelensky said in the letter he sent to Trump on Thursday, that he had always tried to show “respect” for the former president. Like other governments across Europe, the Ukrainians were well aware that Trump had at least an even chance of retaking the White House, and they were determined to establish a relationship. Some even hoped that Trump could be a friend—that unlike Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who have given Kyiv just enough help to hold off the Russian army but not enough to win, Trump might be more decisive, forcing a definitive outcome that might benefit Ukraine.

 

There is a lot more, but I think this gets the main bits across.

 

Edited Friday at 11:17 PM by dan/california

[Vet 0369]

On 9/26/2024 at 4:04 AM, Kraft said:

I know you are probably talking about Europe more specifically when saying West, but its kind of sad and funny, that closing in on 3 years and I still read stuff like this

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/pentagon-wants-white-phosphorus-shells-ukraine-white-house-says-no-rcna172504

With the advent of thermal detection and sights and such, WP no longer has any value as “smoke screens.” The only purpose left is to inflict casualties. Who here has seen the effect of a tiny piece of WP when it contacts flesh? Basically, the only first aid for it is to piss on the ground, and then force it into the wound to stop it from continuing to burn. Then, you have to tell any medical people because as soon as you open the wound, it starts burning again. Whenever my M2 60mm mortar crews fired WP in an exercise, my stomach was in knots because, if a round misfired, the Team Leader unlatched the tube from the baseplate and tipped the tube up on the bipod until the round slid back out of the bore. As the Section Leader, I was the one who had to catch and pin the round as it came out of the tube. I hate “Willy Peter” more than anything else because it scares the ever living crap out of me! It should be banned at this point.

[danfrodo]

some interesting tidbits here today.  bad day for RU losses, little higher than normal.  Another RU idiot approaches the drone that is on ground after he got lucky and disabled it - guess what happened?  Do these nitwits think it will make a nice souvenir?  RU jetski probably thought could outrun drone (turns out, no)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/27/2273169/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-55k-reported-missing-in-Ukraine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

 

[Kraft]

NOT to revive a dead horse, just something I am sure some might find interesting since its been speculated about. Ill leave analysis to the more knowledgable.

 

Edited 23 hours ago by Kraft

[Kraft]

19 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

With the advent of thermal detection and sights and such, WP no longer has any value as “smoke screens.” The only purpose left is to inflict casualties

Both sides still deploy smoke screens, it was even in one of the recent-ish K-2 unit videos where the drone operator comments on the difficulty of spotting the russian movement through it, despite being elevated and flying above them in a Mavik3.

Thermals are rare and mostly elite units have them, not the average  that you would encounter, especially in a trench fight and not in a raid. Most of the fighting is 3-5 guys over a trench. A few smoke shells around the enemy drone proof pillbox would work quite well to approach it

[Vet 0369]

On 9/26/2024 at 12:17 PM, panzermartin said:

I don't really know anymore what coward means. I feel like why not the drone operators are cowards. How can I call coward someone who doesnt want to be killed by a remote controlled drone or instant laser artillery. Maybe past wars battle had some sense of "nobility".  

 

One can be a hero when they are warm, well-fed, and have dry feet and a coward when they are exhausted, cold, hungry, and have wet feet!

Wars have never been “noble.” They have just been sold as such by recruiters. I enlisted in 1969 when we were I’m the middle of a war that was so unpopular that young men were fleeing to Canada and abroad to avoid being drafted. I enlisted because of a sense of duty that the males of my family have served in virtually every military action since settling in this region in 1630. It was my “duty” to serve this Country. “My Country, May She always be right, but right or wrong, She’s my Country!”

I have not regretted it for a minute. I don’t consider the draft dodgers cowards. I made my decision and they made their’s. In some cases young men I knew showed a lot of courage to leave because they knew they would be disowned by their families and never be able to return.

Never judge someone without actually knowing that person!

[Vet 0369]

On 9/26/2024 at 7:51 PM, OldSarge said:

That will be an interesting meeting, would love to know what really happens in it.  I can only imagine the pressure placed on the Trump campaign by pro-Ukraine Republicans to have this meeting.

It has been reported the Zelensky shared his "Victory" plan with both Biden and Harris. Hopefully, he'll be careful about disclosing anything he doesn't want Putin to hear in tomorrow's meeting.

Really? What better way for to spread a major disinformation packet to Putin? It’s a golden opportunity!

[OldSarge]

5 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

Really? What better way for to spread a major disinformation packet to Putin? It’s a golden opportunity!

I assume that you're referring to the meeting with Trump. Perhaps Zelensky did, as a test, we'll likely never know. - mores the pity.

[Vet 0369]

14 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Many thanks for the translations. (Maybe the folks here who tried to drive you off should start rethinking that, even if it isn't what they want to hear)

"What can men do against such reckless hate?"

"Ride out and meet them."

 

 

 

Ukrainian civilians are shown how to operate an antitank weapon on May 26 on a military training course run by the Azov Battalion. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

My thanks good sir! My all-time novel and movies. To give some perspective to the author, J.R. Tolkien, he was a British Officer who fought in the trenches of WWI. Of his entire University class (I don’t remember if it was Cambridge or Oxford , only eight survived the War, including him!

[Vet 0369]

10 hours ago, sburke said:

Part of the difficulty here in the West and particularly in the US is we simply have no experience fighting against an enemy bigger than us.  Even in WW2 the economic might of the allies was overwhelming.  Watching the RA pushing forward is contrary to how we have seen or expected of war.  From a generational perspective the closest we came was Vietnam.  I grew up with the nightly news on that one.... I'm old.  I was a teen when the US pulled out.  The grind of a war that lasted 10 years isn't something the current generation saw other than the war on terror which didn't even make the nightly news.  Not even getting into whether that war should ever have been fought, the US went through a struggle preparing soldiers for it.  The draft was extremely unpopular, avoidable by those with connections or academic (or bone spur) issues.  The poor went, disproportionately minorities fed the front-line grunt positions.  Going awol when you were 10,000 miles away in a country you didn't know the language and you definitely couldn't fit in wasn't an option, but quite a few did make it to Canada, that cesspool of US criminals and rapists who fled across the border.

That was our legacy in a war far less taxing than what Ukraine is facing.  Yeah we didn't exactly provide a stellar example of how to do things better.

We did twice. Once in 1775 and again in 1812. We won both times. It wasn’t easy, and we probably would have lost the first one if we hadn’t gotten help from a European country that simply wanted to “maintain the balance of power” in Europe, so I’d say it’s somewhat comparable to Ukraine (the reason not withstanding).

[Vet 0369]

9 hours ago, Lethaface said:

No, but not knowing much about Harris how did you come to the conclusion that she will ignore the US Constitution? From a foreign, NL, perspective the likelihood of Trump ignoring your constitution is much higher.

In answer to your question, and that will be it.

In 2017, as a D. A. She told the press she would violate not just one, but two Amendments of our Bill of Rights to further her policies, and has continued to advocate to violate one of the Amendments even against major decisions of our Supreme Court.

No, this will undoubtedly raise a fire storm of comments from members of this forum who agree with her policies. Because of this, I WILL NOT BE RESPONDING TO ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THE SUBJECT.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Kraft said:

NOT to revive a dead horse, just something I am sure some might find interesting since its been speculated about. Ill leave analysis to the more knowledgable.

 

Thanks for that, but I have to agree with comments in that post... it's not clear the APS made a successful interception.  At best the video shows the APS was successfully triggered, which definitely is a good thing. But it seems to have been triggered VERY close and perhaps not even successfully.  Not sure the last few frames helps clarify as there is a big explosion, but we can't see more than that.

Steve

[danfrodo]

2 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

In answer to your question, and that will be it.

In 2017, as a D. A. She told the press she would violate not just one, but two Amendments of our Bill of Rights to further her policies, and has continued to advocate to violate one of the Amendments even against major decisions of our Supreme Court.

No, this will undoubtedly raise a fire storm of comments from members of this forum who agree with her policies. Because of this, I WILL NOT BE RESPONDING TO ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THE SUBJECT.

Good lord you are just ridiculous.  And you once again post incredibly stupid nonsense then drive off.  How about not posting the stupid s--t in the first place?

 

Edited 19 hours ago by danfrodo

[sburke]

3 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

We did twice. Once in 1775 and again in 1812. We won both times. It wasn’t easy, and we probably would have lost the first one if we hadn’t gotten help from a European country that simply wanted to “maintain the balance of power” in Europe, so I’d say it’s somewhat comparable to Ukraine (the reason not withstanding).

damn, you are way older than me! 

[sburke]

2 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

In answer to your question, and that will be it.

In 2017, as a D. A. She told the press she would violate not just one, but two Amendments of our Bill of Rights to further her policies, and has continued to advocate to violate one of the Amendments even against major decisions of our Supreme Court.

No, this will undoubtedly raise a fire storm of comments from members of this forum who agree with her policies. Because of this, I WILL NOT BE RESPONDING TO ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THE SUBJECT.

firestorm!!!  well you are entitled to your opinion, but I'd still say what she said in 2017 doesn't hold a candle to what actually happened on Jan 6th.

[alison]

This whole thing confused me because Harris was already on the national stage in 2017. As a non-American I was going to ignore it, but since the typo/misinformation is now quoted two posts further along, here is some clarification.

Harris was San Francisco district attorney from 2004 through 2011, then California attorney general from 2011 through 2017, at which point she became US senator for California until stepping up as veep under Biden in 2021. The controversial soundbyte appears to be a brief fragment pulled from some kind of interview with local press in 2007. I will leave it for Americans to consider the relevance of a passing comment made while working as a local law enforcement official 15+ years ago to Harris' legislative priorities as a current federal politician and potential future head of state.

To get this vaguely back on topic, I have to say as a non-American, but someone living on the front lines of a conflict whose outcome will depend a lot on Americans not sticking their head in the sand for the next 4 years, I have not been especially comforted by the foreign policy statements made by either candidate in this election. I get the sense they are both pandering to voters who do not care even a tiny little bit about what is happening around the rest of the world or America's unique role in maintaining the rules-based international order. Nonetheless, it is clear that one party is much more likely than the other to maintain a largely inoffensive, middle-of-the-road status quo insofar as international relations goes, which is probably the best we can hope for overseas.

Unfortunately the rest of the world doesn't get to have a say in this decision which will affect us all. Consider your vote wisely, American friends. I know local issues will always seem more personally relevant than stuff happening on the other side of the planet, but bear in mind that POTUS is a special public office whose global impact is significant.

[JonS]

5 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

In 2017, as a D. A. She told the press she would violate not just one, but two Amendments of our Bill of Rights to further her policies, and has continued to advocate to violate one of the Amendments even against major decisions of our Supreme Court.

But ... why would you even care about that? Aren't you a constitutional originalist - I mean, I think you said you are, just a page or two ago? The bill of rights isn't part of the original constitution, so why would you care whether anyone upholds it or not.

It's not like those amendments are even important; since the constitution as written is perfect and needs no interpretation then surely, surely it doesn't any need amendment either.

Edited 16 hours ago by JonS

[mosuri]

New vid from Covert Cabal, this time concentrating on a single depot. Clickbaity title, but an interesting point about how many vehicles likely are in an unworkable condition, even if they make the numbers in satellite imagery.

 

[Vanir Ausf B]

5 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

In 2017, as a D. A. She told the press she would violate not just one, but two Amendments of our Bill of Rights to further her policies, and has continued to advocate to violate one of the Amendments even against major decisions of our Supreme Court.

Almost certainly false. For one thing Harris was not a D.A. in 2017, she was Attorney General of California. As for the quote:

Fact Check: Kamala Harris quote about disregarding constitution is fake