How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Probus]

7 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

I think Ukraine and Taiwan are different, but I understand the sentiment.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but we have to support our allies.  In Ukraine, most of the $$$ spent are going right into new weapons for our military.  Many (hyper) conservative friends of mine don't understand or disagree with this position.  Plus all the weapons given to Ukraine are taking down a former enemy's weapon systems and hopefully/eventually a dictator.  The thing that scares me is that if we pull our support for Ukraine its just gonna throw fuel on the fire for Putin to invade another country. 

There is no way Putin wants to pull the US or NATO into this war.  That would be a knockout blow for him and he knows it.  Same thing goes for all the nuclear saber rattling.  Dictators want to stay in power and any of the above will almost certainly lead to him being overthrown.

I just want to cavate all that with saying I am nowhere near as knowledgeable as most folks in this thread, but even I can see the writing on the wall.

[Probus]

8 minutes ago, sburke said:

There is still a distinct split in the GOP when it comes to national security.

You couldn't be more right correct!

[ArmouredTopHat]

Russians seem determined to score continued own goals with their decisions. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, kimbosbread said:

Modern American isolationism is driven by 3 things, in my opinion:

• Globalization in a very real way has hurt a lot of lower or middle income American workers, and a lot of people are not fans after watching factories and jobs get offshored. The software generation is seeing this too: Consistent offshoring of junior or less skilled roles, especially in the remote work era.
• Most NATO members spend less than the mandated amount on security, and then come running for help to the US, and/or actively contribute to the problem (Germany with their Russia policy until very recently).
• There’s also the experience of the 20+ years in Afghanistan, and not wanting to repeat that ****show. I think Ukraine and Taiwan are different, but I understand the sentiment.

I recall a documentary they aired up here back during Trump I admin.  The US was imposing aluminum tariffs on Canada (of all places) based on some BS national security exemptions.  They interviewed the owner of a beer can factory who was upset that the costs of aluminum production would be passed directly onto his company and he would have to lay off employees as a result.  Then they went down to the factory floor and interviewed a worker who was all “damn straight, we need to show Canada who is boss”.

And here we have the fundamental problem with the US right now.  The average voter, who has the power, has little idea of why or how the US is in fact a global super power.  Nor do they really understand how their own economy works. So they turn to easy answers and certainties that are built on outright but easy lies.

Democracies, historically, are abandoned because two foundational elements are corrupted - information and equality.  Without purity in these two elements democracy will die. I will let history show where the US and frankly the entire West is on these two points.

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I recall a documentary they aired up here back during Trump I admin.  The US was imposing aluminum tariffs on Canada (of all places) based on some BS national security exemptions.  They interviewed the owner of a beer can factory who was upset that the costs of aluminum production would be passed directly onto his company and he would have to lay off employees as a result.  Then they went down to the factory floor and interviewed a worker who was all “damn straight, we need to show Canada who is boss”.

And here we have the fundamental problem with the US right now.  The average voter, who has the power, has little idea of why or how the US is in fact a global super power.  Nor do they really understand how their own economy works. So they turn to easy answers and certainties that are built on outright but easy lies.

Democracies, historically, are abandoned because two foundational elements are corrupted - information and equality.  Without purity in these two elements democracy will die. I will let history show where the US and frankly the entire West is on these two points.

Asking why MAGA doesn't support UKR is like asking a bee why he buzzes.  Because that's what his tribe does.  Giving them credit for actually thinking about this subject is flippin' absurd.  If they thought about things they wouldn't be MAGA.  

A conservative thinking person might hold thoughtful view based on an evidence based reality -- but they are all either in hiding (pretending to be MAGA stupid) or have left they party out of disgust.  Now, it's all just ignorant tribal identity stupidity.  Fortunately for GOP there's more than enough american idiots to replace the smart, responsible conservatives who have disappearred.

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

And here we have the fundamental problem with the US right now.  The average voter, who has the power, has little idea of why or how the US is in fact a global super power.  Nor do they really understand how their own economy works. So they turn to easy answers and certainties that are built on outright but easy lies.

I think that’s slightly unfair to the slobbering masses, ignorant and stupid as they may be.

The rich democracies have an existential question to answer: Why is their standard of living for large segments of their population declining over the last 30 years, but many the politicians and economists say everything is better than it ever was (especially whichever party is in power)? We’re not even talking about shipping jobs overseas, or no punishments for corporate leaders in opiates or aviation.

Let’s use me as an example: If things were better than they ever were, I would have higher purchasing power for my income than 10 years ago. My post-pandemic net worth at purchasing power parity would be the same or higher, when based on the costs of stuff in my city (one of the most expensive cities in the world, to be fair). Instead I’m lower. Houses and groceries doubled in price, and our public school system is in full-blown collapse. My same ****ty car is at least 50% more expensive than the same model in 2018 when I bought it. I make good money as a staff engineer at whatever top software firm I happen to be working for at any given time; many less fortunate people are doing much worse, and it’s unproductive to tell them they are ignorant.

The scarier, less-boo-hoo software example is this: When I was a kid, a public school teacher could afford a house in my city, or most other west coast cities. A rich friend remarked that his family’s servants all owned houses too. That’s unthinkable nowadays in our cities. Instead, we are at the point where my rather ****ty house from 1931 is out of reach for 90+% of people even in a city with very high incomes. Unfortunately all of the nice places- or places that have decent jobs- have seen similar price increases way beyond what one would expect from population and wage growth and inflation. Whether this is due to demand, idiotic housing policy or other shenanigans is immaterial to voter unhappiness.

 

[chuckdyke]

A good one today about the Battle for Verdun. "A stalemate is a victory for the defending side!" It about sums up the Ukraine one side attacks the other defends and the attack bogs down. Once the logistics dry up your forces are handicapped, come in the US elections. With one journalist even suggesting: "Why don't we help Russia?" In a democracy unfortunately to be stupid is a human right. 

[Probus]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Democracies, historically, are abandoned because two foundational elements are corrupted - information and equality.  Without purity in these two elements democracy will die. I will let history show where the US and frankly the entire West is on these two points.

Are you grouping Republics in with Democracies?  Because, information - OK. Equality - never going to happen.  It can't.  It's human nature.  That's why Communist governments all fail fairly fast.  They sound good on paper, but then reality sets in.

But I think Republics have the best chance of surviving IF you can limit the corruption.  I would say get rid of the corruption, but then you'd call me a dreamer, 'cause that's not going to happen either. 

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Probus said:

Are you grouping Republics in with Democracies? 

Tell me what the difference is? Republic is from Latin on the other hand Democracy is from Greek. Essentially it means the same, government for the people by the people. 

[Probus]

4 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Tell me what the difference is? Republic is from Latin on the other hand Democracy is from Greek. Essentially it means the same, government for the people by the people. 

I think of a Democracy as the people vote directly on issues, you have no representative. Whereas a Republic has representatives that are elected that vote on different kinds of issues.

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Probus said:

I think of a Democracy as the people vote directly on issues, you have no representative.

I like to think that Australia is a democracy. We vote for your local representative of the political party you support. The major political parties decide who will be a minister or prime minister. There is a move to declare a republic it means that King Charles will be replaced by a President. Definitions in my opinion depends on where you live. Countries with the name of Democratic People Republic are often dictators ship run by a President for life. Now I live in the Philippines for the foreseeable future, so my rule is stay out of local politics. 

[Sojourner]

because if they were honest and called themselves fascist dictatorships, the peasants would revolt

[danfrodo]

Meanwhile, the war goes on, ugly and unnecessary as ever, perpetuated by one evil person to the detriment of millions.  A few videos I hadn't seen here yet, one rather amazing attack on a RU boat dock.  Loss tally says over 1000 RU causalties and 40+ artillery systems lost in a day, for seemingly endless number of days.  I get that RU has lots of people, but the artillery losses seem absolutely unsustainable, even if UKR figure is 2X reality.  

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/8/2/2260080/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Another-Russian-air-defense-system-gets-trashed?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And here we have the fundamental problem with the US right now.  The average voter, who has the power, has little idea of why or how the US is in fact a global super power.  Nor do they really understand how their own economy works

Long ago I termed this the Fruit Of The Loom Thinking.  American workers in good paying jobs making underwear for a long time household name brand were laid off because the company outsourced their jobs to places like Vietnam.  The reason was Walmart sold some huge percentage of their underwear and demanded a lower price.  Not because it was reasonable to ask for one, but because they could.  The only way Fruit Of The Loom could stay in business was to outsource.  On the one hand it was an example of one American company putting Americans out of work in another company.

But if you dug deeper, you can see that the American workers that were laid off were partly responsible for their own demise.  How so?  Because guess where they shop?  Walmart.  And guess why they shop there?  Because things are low priced.  And why are the low priced?  Because that's what the workers want.  Well, except for the thing they used to make before they were laid off.

People generally don't understand economics.  They don't understand that there is cause and effect.  They don't understand, as the old saying goes, "no free lunch".  Unfortunately, most people not only want a free lunch, but they want it to be 2x bigger than they really need to live a healthy life.

Bringing this back around to Ukraine, part of what is going on is people want American to be "Great", but they don't understand what "Great" is, nor do they understand what causes a country to be "Great".   So they demand things without understanding the consequences.

Quick example. When Americans were blaming Biden for high inflation they don't understand that it was a global problem and that America actually did FAR better than most countries in controlling it.  So, if anything,. Biden should have been given credit for handling a crappy situation objectively pretty well.  But nope, that's now how people think.  They see food prices go up for them, and that's as far as they take it.

Frustrating.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

RSL Club, Returned Servicemen League. The chairman during the 60's: "You will never see a Toyota parked in front of our premises!" 25 years later GM and Ford closed business in Australia. Oh by the way I bought a new Toyota Veloz here in the Philippines, they made an offer to difficult to refuse. Comes with three-year service and warranty. World economy is shifting towards Asia. 

[Offshoot]

Four S-400 Launchers Destroyed in Ukraine's Attack on Crimea — Media (and possibly a battery radar)
 

Quote

 

Ukrainian long-range attack on the occupied Crimea on August 2nd night has resulted in destruction of four launchers of russian S-400 air defense system, Ukrinform reports citing the Crimean Wind community on Telegram.

Earlier reports also suggest a 92N6 radar of this system was affected by this strike, landing on the heights of Kaya-Bash in Sevastopol. The community shared a video allegedly showing a salvo of ATACMS ballistic missiles being fired at Crimea.

 

 

Ukraine uses guided ammunition for drones
 

Quote

 

The Russian military reported the use of laser-guided bombs by Ukrainian bomber drones.

A photo of the drone and the ammunition was published by the VictoryDrones Telegram channel.

A Ukrainian heavy multi-rotor drone was shot down by the Russian occupiers over their positions while it was looking for targets.

A corrected bomb with an optical guidance system was found on board on one of the suspensions.

 

 

Reporting from Ukraine tells an interesting story from Vovchansk about a remote controlled ground drone delivering an improvised bomb made from a 200 kg hydrogen canister from a wrecked EV - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxqAOs29jiE

 

 

 

 

[paxromana]

3 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

RSL Club, Returned Servicemen League. The chairman during the 60's: "You will never see a Toyota parked in front of our premises!" 25 years later GM and Ford closed business in Australia. Oh by the way I bought a new Toyota Veloz here in the Philippines, they made an offer to difficult to refuse. Comes with three-year service and warranty. World economy is shifting towards Asia. 

Hardly a new thing. When I started teaching in counry NSW in my second year in 1978 I taught with a woman whose father was a WW2 veteran ... she'd just bought a Toyota and her father had had a blazing row with her over it. It wasn't just the price, it was the reliability ... Japanese cars were much more reliable than Australian ones.

[ArmouredTopHat]

Morozovsk got utterly hammered this morning / last night. 
 

 

Edited August 3 by ArmouredTopHat

[ArmouredTopHat]

T

This might be one of the most significant mass drone attacks on an airfield so far in this war, if they actually torched a bunch of jets. 

[zinz]

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/dons-weekly-29-july-2024-part-1

I thought this overview graphic from the beginning of the week might give a overview over the fighting

Quote

While combat is widespread throughout Ukraine, there are quiet sectors where territory hasn’t changed hands in many months, if ever, and there are sectors where either Russia or Ukraine is actively trying to advance. This map shows where each side is trying to advance and notes how many weeks they’ve been trying to advance in that sector. It also includes a rough approximation of the average number of meters they gained each week they were attacking.

 

[zinz]

https://topcargo200.com/

 

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, Probus said:

Are you grouping Republics in with Democracies?  Because, information - OK. Equality - never going to happen.  It can't.  It's human nature.  That's why Communist governments all fail fairly fast.  They sound good on paper, but then reality sets in.

But I think Republics have the best chance of surviving IF you can limit the corruption.  I would say get rid of the corruption, but then you'd call me a dreamer, 'cause that's not going to happen either. 

It is likely also why Democracies also have a history of failure, falling back into older forms of power distribution.  The power of the most recent foray into democracy in the last two hundred years has been the power of the illusion of equality.  Equality is not some perfect Star Trek distribution of power, it is equal chances.  The theory being that if every child, regardless of birth station, has an equal chance to rise and succeed.  And each child has an equal vote.  Equal status under the law, regardless of parentage.  Well then we can all continue to buy into the system and reinforce that.

Corruption is simply a symptom of inequality.  As are legacies and the realities of class.  A child born in inner city poverty in the West has the illusion of equality. They can rise to be rich and powerful with the same chances as anyone else…until they cannot.  And we know that for the most part they cannot. The power of this illusion holds most of the whole thing together.

But these are messy concepts.  We negotiate with this messiness all the time.  And are willing to, so long as democracy appears to provide a better chance than another system.  But once the information gets tainted, suppressed and inverted, and the illusion of equality is broken…that is when democracy dies…by suicide.

[The_Capt]

49 minutes ago, zinz said:

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/dons-weekly-29-july-2024-part-1

I thought this overview graphic from the beginning of the week might give a overview over the fighting

 

That should be impossible.  We are basically looking at a Western Front situation, with a tiny fraction of the troops densities…in 2024.  If one looks at the terrain, it is perfect manoeuvre country - relatively flat rolling hills and sporadic close terrain.  Both sides have access to mechanized warfare, in Russia’s case…a lot of mechanized warfare.  And we are seeing meters per week at enormous costs.  

If this conflict is not technically frozen, it is about as cold-stiff as one can get.  And we are still not sure why.

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

I think that’s slightly unfair to the slobbering masses, ignorant and stupid as they may be.

The rich democracies have an existential question to answer: Why is their standard of living for large segments of their population declining over the last 30 years, but many the politicians and economists say everything is better than it ever was (especially whichever party is in power)? We’re not even talking about shipping jobs overseas, or no punishments for corporate leaders in opiates or aviation.

Let’s use me as an example: If things were better than they ever were, I would have higher purchasing power for my income than 10 years ago. My post-pandemic net worth at purchasing power parity would be the same or higher, when based on the costs of stuff in my city (one of the most expensive cities in the world, to be fair). Instead I’m lower. Houses and groceries doubled in price, and our public school system is in full-blown collapse. My same ****ty car is at least 50% more expensive than the same model in 2018 when I bought it. I make good money as a staff engineer at whatever top software firm I happen to be working for at any given time; many less fortunate people are doing much worse, and it’s unproductive to tell them they are ignorant.

The scarier, less-boo-hoo software example is this: When I was a kid, a public school teacher could afford a house in my city, or most other west coast cities. A rich friend remarked that his family’s servants all owned houses too. That’s unthinkable nowadays in our cities. Instead, we are at the point where my rather ****ty house from 1931 is out of reach for 90+% of people even in a city with very high incomes. Unfortunately all of the nice places- or places that have decent jobs- have seen similar price increases way beyond what one would expect from population and wage growth and inflation. Whether this is due to demand, idiotic housing policy or other shenanigans is immaterial to voter unhappiness.

 

And we are back to micro and macro masking.  We see it in this war - if one looks only at the big picture there is risk of missing the small signals that add up.  We saw this back in Feb-Mar of ‘22 right here on this thread.  While experts were drawing big red and blue lines everywhere, we were seeing a bunch of small engagements that simply were not adding up to macro conclusions.

And the inverse is also true. If one only stares at the small picture, the larger trends and macro effects get missed and there is risk of making the wrong conclusions through narrow extrapolation.

The average person is an expert only in themselves.  And that is enough of a challenge for the mass majority of the population. Everyone develops expertise in their work/careers but for the vast majority it is the expertise of a cog in giant machines.  Few are afforded the time and support to become broad experts.  And given the inflation of human complexity, it is nearly impossible for true expertise to exist - the death of expertise.  I am an expert in warfare.  Studied my entire life, hold advanced degrees, written and published…and I only understand a very small slice of the damned thing.  My expertise in warfare is narrow in comparison to the subject. To the point that my assessments are only slightly better than throwing dice.

So what? Democracy asks too much to really work in such an environment.  Expecting a voter to make an informed decision based on the state of the economy may as well be asking them to vote based on the weather.  Those seeking power blame the other side, cook up BS explanations and try and tell the loudest.  Add in the recent phenomenon of access to nearly unlimited information and we truly have entered into the Invention of Lying Age.  A voter basically needs endless Phds to be able to make an informed decision.  In these conditions the allure of an all-knowing autocrat is enticing.  

Where do we go from here? Wanna make a bet on how many people are asking ChatGPT how they should vote? The only good news is that we have been here before and somehow made it work.  We enter into the arena of art and human instinct, those shadowy lands where math falls apart.  We used to have religion to fill in these gaps; the tonic to uncertainty is faith. But we killed our gods and now have to deal with it.  

As to this war. It is a symptom and a cause, just like every war before it. I think it is the beginning of a new paradigm and we are being tested by it. I do not sense we are making the future right now, we are simply bracing for impacts that were put in motion decades ago.

[hcrof]

All the talk so far has been about tanks and drones but I feel like there is a quiet infantry revolution going on at the same time. Squads and platoons are extremely spread out and I wonder if that means the old 2 fire team model still works. Will squads get bigger and act as mini-platoons or smaller and more reliant on supporting fires from land/air drones or team weapons made more lethal with the aim assist technology we already see on some rifles? Or will they just carry on as before?

Anyone with any infantry experience have any thoughts?