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bolverk

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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. Those who think the US is overburdened in its support of Ukraine are sorely mistaken.

    Here's the chart showing the GDP percentage for each country:

    https://app.23degrees.io/view/F1tc2gv8QzFCs1ij-bar-stacked-horizontal-figure_3_4_csv_v2-1

    Estonia               4.1%
    Denmark            3.0%
    Lithuania            2.0%
    Norway               1.7%
    Latvia                  1.7%
    Netherlands        1.5%
    Slovakia               1.4%
    Poland                 1.3%
    Finland                 1.3%
    Germany              1.1%
    Croatia                 1.0%
    Bulgaria               1.0%
    Sweden                1.0%
    Czech Republic    1.0%
    Belgium               1.0%
    Spain                    0.9%
    Austria                  0.8%
    Greece                  0.8%
    Slovenia                0.7%    
    Hungary               0.7%
    Italy                      0.7%
    France                  0.7%
    Romania              0.6%
    Portugal               0.6%
    Cyprus                  0.6%
    United Kingdom   0.6%
    Luxembourg          0.6%
    Malta                     0.5%
    Ireland                   0.4%
    Switzerland            0.3%
    Canada                  0.3%
    UNITED STATES    0.3%
    Japan                     0.2%
    Iceland                   0.2%
    South Korea          0.1%

    @BeardIP I expect you to return and apologize for being so wrong in assuming other countries aren't also shouldering their burden.

     

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  2. It's not even the Bible taking precedence over the Constitution. It's their specific interpretation of scripture that has to be followed. Take the issue of birth control, for example.

    The Catholic and, I guess, now a new fundagelical prohibition on contraception was God's command to go forth to "be fruitful and multiply," along with the story about God smiting Onan for disobeying him by not knocking up his dead brother's wife and instead "spilling his seed."

    Well, guess what? I've used some form of birth control my entire and have multiplied. Maybe not by a factor that others would like, but I did. I had a kid with my ex-wife.

    Then there's God's wrath at a guy not putting his sperm up a gal's coot-coot. Did he kill him for the jizz getting on the ground or for disobeying his command? I, for one, have "spilled my seed" in places you wouldn't want to know about, but God hasn't struck me down. So maybe the issue is not really the "issue."

    This gets back to OP's old rant about Texas being run by if it were to secede and be led by Catholics because it's the largest sect--though nowhere close to being a majority.

    image.thumb.png.532babfa51dab18ae57d3208cff3bb04.png

     

    Shit is way too split for one interpretation of scripture to dominate over the others, which is kind of the fucking point of having a wall separate church and state. Why the hell do these theocrats want to go back to goddam holy wars?

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  3. 25 minutes ago, troph said:

    To be fair it does come below your waist to your 20 something year old scrotum level amirite? If so you just haven’t adjusted for age and gravity- that’s a forgivable sin.

     

    Just to the belt buckle.

    image.thumb.png.5820c796b363427bfa388a1a24f052cc.png

     

    Also, since you watched that donkey show for your buddy, you should get him to watch the Frontline episode in kind.

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  4. 12 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

    Terrific episode. The ninja attack was a little rushed, but no complaints. 
     

      Reveal hidden contents

    Mariko is a better fighter in the book than depicted on the show. She takes down a bunch of grays (Ishido’s men)when she attempts to leave Osaka. Exhaustion finally gets her to yield.

    I know the show has budget constraints, but the ninja attack is a pretty long sequence in the book. The Browns (Toranga’s men) fight valiantly, but the ninjas are extremely skilled fighters and they got the drop on them. Blackthorne and Mariko are able to hold out for hours in the Toranaga panic room until they blow up the door and Mariko. The attack ends near dawn and all of Osaka knows about it in the morning. Using ninja is the most shameful thing a samurai can do, so Ishido is fucked politically. 

    It might be too late in the show to address, but there are many questions about the heirs true parentage throughout the book. I’ll leave it there in hopes they get to it next week. 

     

     

    I haven't read the book, but I rewatched the 1980 one from when I was a kid (and hadn't seen it since) in the week before this premiered. The older adaptation treated the scene similarly to this newer one. Thanks for the additional background.

  5. The first 6 minutes are worth watching—there are lots of good chuckles about Israel and Iran. The remaining 8 minutes make fun of Trump if you care to stick around for that. 

     

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  6. 10 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    Allies and partners can replace almost everything except dead Ukrainians. They can’t be replaced, they are the future of the country and the future security providers against Russia no matter what happens. Whether this ends on favorable or unfavorable terms. 


    What is maddening about the delayed aid is that it’s forcing Ukraine to expend more of its most precious resource, which is people.  In a defensive struggle you can trade space, mass, and firepower for time.  Ukraine has to choose mass because trading for space means more dead civilians and they don’t have superior firepower.  This goes against NATO doctrine and planning which has always been to trade for space until superior firepower can arrive in theater and be brought to bear.

    Back to the issue of saving the younger generation. This goes deep to Ukrainian roots and reality. First, Ukraine was an aging, emigre society before the war. They are not a Middle East insurgent nation with an excess of young males. 
     

    Second- the deeply agrarian Ukrainians recall the trauma of the Great Famine and Holodomor. First the Ukrainians ate their seed grain. Then they ate the dead, then they starved.  A European peasant never eats the seed grain until there is no choice. You eat the livestock, you eat the aging milk-cow, you eat grass and bark to survive the winter before you eat seed grain.

    The remaining young Ukrainians are the seed grain of a nation and we need to stop pressing them to consume their seed grain as we find excuses not to donate .0003 percent of our GDP in firepower.

    That's helpful for understanding the rationale a little better. Thanks for the context.

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  7. 4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    They’ve partly been trying to preserve the 18-25 crowd as much as possible, hoping they’ll make lots of babies as well as keeping their economy going.

    I get that as a long-term concern since it's already been discussed quite a bit, but the issue of being invaded with the risk of losing the entire eastern half of the country seems a bit more pressing right now. Again, I don't like giving them too much shit over it, but this is an all-out war.

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  8.  

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    Canada to Hand Over 450 SkyRanger Drones to Ukraine This Summerimage.thumb.png.0f6dff1e97de73f7f4f1fa896034bb04.png

    Canada will start handing over 450 SkyRanger multi-purpose unmanned aerial systems to Ukraine this summer.

    The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported on this.

    According to the ministry, at an extraordinary meeting of the steering group of the Drone Coalition, Ukraine informed its partners ‘about the situation on the battlefield and the urgent needs to repel enemy attacks.’

    It was decided that Canada will start transferring 450 SkyRanger multi-purpose unmanned aerial systems in the summer.

    Back in February of this year, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair announced that the country would transfer 800 SkyRanger R70 unmanned aerial systems.

    The transfer of drones is funded by $500 million in military aid to Ukraine.

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this assistance during his visit to Kyiv in June 2023.

    The SkyRanger R70 is a multi-purpose unmanned aerial system developed by Teledyne FLIR.

    It includes multi-rotor vertical takeoff and landing drones that can perform reconnaissance and logistics functions.

    The drones are equipped with an autonomous navigation system, which allows the drone to operate under manual or autonomous control without being tied to satellite signals.

    The manufacturer claims that the onboard computer is capable of automatically capturing targets at a distance of up to 5 km and identifying up to 10 moving objects simultaneously.

    The SkyRanger R70 drones are equipped with a carbon fiber and magnesium frame. They can operate at altitudes up to 4,500 meters above sea level and withstand sustained winds of 65 km/h and gusts of up to 90 km/h. They are capable of carrying a payload of up to 3.5 kg, which makes it possible to use the unmanned platform, in addition to reconnaissance, as a means of delivering cargo or dropping ammunition.

     

     

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    The Netherlands, in cooperation with Denmark and Germany, will purchase RQ-35 Heidrun UAVs for Ukraine

    image.png.587d8897575bd167912e9f769ea861cb.png

    The Netherlands will purchase RQ-35 Heidrun reconnaissance drones for Ukraine worth €200 million.

    The drones will be procured in cooperation with Denmark and Germany as part of the Drone Coalition.

    The press service of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported about this after an extraordinary meeting of the Coalition’s steering group held the day before.

    In March of this year, Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren, following a meeting of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine, said that the Netherlands would purchase aviation weapons for F-16 fighter jets, which would soon be transferred to Ukraine.

    The Dutch government also decided to purchase €200 million worth of reconnaissance UAVs for Ukraine.

    However, it was not specified at the time what type of drones were being purchased. It was only noted that their purchase would be made in coordination with other partner countries and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

    And now the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has reported that it regarded RQ-35 Heidrun drones, which would be purchased in cooperation with Denmark and Germany. However, it is not known what role these countries play in the procurement of these UAVs.

    RQ-35 Heidrun drone
    The RQ-35 Heidrun reconnaissance drones are manufactured by the Danish company Sky-Watch and are designed for reconnaissance and target detection at low altitudes.

    The fixed-wing RQ-35 Heidrun is launched from the hand. The radius of data collection and streaming video transmission reaches up to 30 km, while the generation of new 2D/3D mapping material reaches up to 25 kilometers.

    The fully equipped RQ-35 Heidrun unmanned aircraft system, together with a short-range patch antenna, fits into a backpack.

    As Militarnyi reported, last week the Dutch government agreed to allocate an additional billion euros in military aid in addition to the €2 billion the Netherlands had previously planned to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2024.

    The country will provide €3 billion in military aid next year and allocate €400 million to support the economy and repair Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.

     

     

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  9. Ukrainian drone operators are impressive. Boop, boop, boom in the butthole.


     

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    Ukraine Strikes Radar Station in Russia, ‘Turned Into Colander,’ Sources Say
    Sources within the special services told Kyiv Post that a $100 million radar monitoring the sky 700 km deep into Ukrainian territory was targeted inside Russia by seven kamikaze drones.

    image.thumb.png.48d6ac994ed00718f4ee7b638d8dcc88.png

    The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) targeted a Russian long-range radar station in the Bryansk region, which was monitoring the sky 700 km deep into Ukrainian territory, sources within the special services informed Kyiv Post.

    “The Russians now have one less modernized Nebo-U complex,” the source said.

    This radar helped Russian troops detect Ukrainian weapons and supported bombers attacking Ukrainian border settlements with guided aerial bombs.

    The radar, valued at $100 million, was hit by seven aircraft-type kamikaze drones. According to sources, the Nebo-U complex is no longer operational and has “likely turned into a colander.”

    The source added that the destruction of this radar has limited Russian troops’ ability to detect air targets along the northern border of Ukraine.

    “The radar blackout for the Russians will assist our troops in conducting reconnaissance, launching drones, and making better use of army aviation in this area,” the source told Kyiv Post.

    This marks the second Nebo-U complex destroyed by the 13th Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of the SBU. The first was destroyed in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to the source’s data.

    The Russian Nebo-U, a modernized version of the Soviet-era Nebo radar, is intended for detecting, measuring the coordinates and tracking air targets of various categories from aircraft to cruise and guided missiles, including small hypersonic, ballistic and subtle missiles using stealth technologies at 600 km. The complex was adopted by the Russian army in 1995.

    In March, the Special Operations Forces (SSO) announced the successful destruction of the Zhitel Russian electronic warfare complex in the Zaporizhzhia region.

    Previously, the SSO reported the successful destruction of the Russian Zoopark-1 surveillance and fire control radar complex, a highly valued asset often touted by the Russian military. The radar station, along with its crew, was eliminated. According to open-source data, the complex is estimated to cost approximately $10-15 million.

     

     

     

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  10. This is a good, straightforward assessment of Ukraine's three biggest challenges. All three seem fixable, but it will take time. They also should remind us of all the lost time.

     

    Ukraine’s Big Vulnerabilities: Ammunition, Soldiers and Air Defense
    The shortages add up to a dire situation for Ukraine in the third year of the war, presenting commanders with near impossible choices on how to deploy limited resources.

    Ukraine’s top military commander has issued a bleak assessment of the army’s positions on the eastern front, saying they have “worsened significantly in recent days.”

    Russian forces were pushing hard to exploit their growing advantage in manpower and ammunition to break through Ukrainian lines, the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement over the weekend.

    “Despite significant losses, the enemy is increasing his efforts by using new units on armored vehicles, thanks to which he periodically achieves tactical gains,” the general said.

    At the same time, Ukraine’s energy ministry told millions of civilians to charge their power banks, get their generators out of storage and “be ready for any scenario” as Ukrainian power plants are damaged or destroyed in devastating Russian airstrikes.

    With few critical military supplies flowing into Ukraine from the United States for months, commanders are being forced to make difficult choices over where to deploy limited resources as the toll on civilians grows daily.

    Even before the disappearance of American assistance — a bill to provide $60 billion in military and other aid may come to a vote in the House of Representatives this week — there was a consensus among Ukrainian commanders and military analysts that the third year of war was going to be extremely difficult.

    President Volodymyr Zelensky warned again on Monday night that delays in American assistance are deepening the challenges at the front and said the latest information from Ukrainian intelligence suggested that the Kremlin is preparing for some sort of major offensive in late spring or early summer.

    The three most critical challenges for Ukraine have been evident for months: a lack of ammunition, a shortage of well-trained troops and dwindling air defenses.

    Now, as Russia intensifies its assaults, each individual issue is compounding the impact of the other vulnerabilities and heightening the risk that Russian forces will push through Ukrainian defenses.

    Here is a look at the critical challenges Ukraine faces at the moment and how its leaders are trying to mitigate them.

     

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    Shell Hunger
    In testimony before Congress last week, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top American military commander in Europe, provided a blunt assessment of Ukraine’s dire shortage of ammunition.

    “If one side can shoot and the other side can’t shoot back, the side that can’t shoot back loses,” General Cavoli said.

    America had provided Ukraine with the bulk of its artillery munitions, he said, and Russia is poised to soon be able to fire 10 shells for every Ukrainian shell.

    “If we do not continue to support Ukraine, Ukraine could lose,” he testified, urging lawmakers to approve a new aid package.

    The longer range and greater destructive power of rocket systems and big guns like Howitzers — which are not affected by weather and are less susceptible to electronic warfare interference than drones — make them essential tools. While drones have significantly altered the battlefield, often turning any attempt to cross open terrain into a suicide mission, they have limits.

    “Drones can effectively destroy military equipment, tanks,” said Viktor Nazarov, an adviser to the former Ukrainian top general, Valery Zaluzhny. “But you cannot destroy defensive lines with drones.”

    When the enemy has an advantage of five to one in terms of shells, Mr. Nazarov said, they can attack. When it reaches 10 to one, they can succeed.

    Since the fall of Avdiivka earlier this year, Russia has taken only small patches of land at great cost without scoring a major operational breakthrough. But after replenishing its arsenal with assistance from North Korea and Iran, Russia is using a period of warm, dry weather to launch assaults with dozens of tanks and fighting vehicles in recent days, Ukrainian officials said.

    General Syrsky said Russia was trying to seize the moment to achieve an operational breakthrough along several major lines of attack, posing the most imminent threat to the town of Chasiv Yar. The heavily fortified hilltop town — seven miles west of Bakhmut — protects an agglomeration of some of the Donbas region’s largest cities, including the home of the eastern command in Kramatorsk.

    Ukrainian commanders are hopeful that several initiatives by European allies to secure hundreds of thousands of artillery shells will soon start to alleviate their urgent need.

    The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, told reporters last week that his country had now identified one million rounds of 155-caliber artillery shells — 200,000 more than previously estimated — and that 15 nations had joined the campaign to finance their purchase.

    Estonia and Britain are leading similar drives, Mr. Pavel said. It remains unclear how successful they will be or how quickly large stocks of ammunition can make it to the front.

    Until then, the burden will fall on the infantry. And since, as General Cavoli testified, artillery remains the biggest killer in Ukraine, Russia’s advantage means more Ukrainian soldiers will die. That deepens another major vulnerability: troop strength.

     

     

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    Mobilization
    When the commander of Ukrainian forces in the east, Gen. Yurii Sodol, addressed lawmakers last week ahead of a vote aimed at improving the nation’s draft process, he painted a bleak portrait.

    The widespread use of drones, he said, means that an armored vehicle is usually targeted and destroyed within 30 minutes when deployed to the zero line at the front. So it falls primarily to the infantry soldiers to hold their positions without much support against waves of Russian infantry attacks.

    A squad of eight to 10 soldiers is typically tasked with defending 100 meters of land, General Sodol said, but Ukraine cannot always field full squads.

    “If there are only two soldiers, they can defend 20 meters of the front,” he said. “Immediately, the question arises: Who will cover the remaining 80 meters?”

    Parliament has recently passed laws aimed at replenishing its forces, but the process took months, and there are still many challenges with recruitment. In an effort to meet immediate needs, the Ukrainian command said it would rotate “thousands” of soldiers currently in the rear to combat positions. But that creates another problem: ensuring soldiers deployed to the front have proper training.

    General Syrsky said that the quality of training was a “serious problem” and that they were working to have combat veterans take a more active role in the process to improve the situation.

    But no amount of training can protect against the powerful thousand-pound glide bombs that Russia has been using to obliterate Ukrainian fortifications. That is why, Ukrainians say, they urgently need help from Western allies to help finally close the sky.

     

     

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    Air Defense
    “If we talk about the air war, it should be divided into two parts,” Mr. Nazarov, the senior military adviser, said.

    “The first part is our air and missile defense against Russian missile attacks across the entire territory of our country,” he said. “The second part is what the war in the air looks like on the front line.”

    On both fronts, Ukraine is struggling.

    The Institute for the Study of War, in a special report on the aerial campaign, said commanders faced tough choices in how to deploy air defenses. The systems that can intercept Russian missiles targeting Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, it said, are the same ones needed to keep Russian bombers dropping glide bombs at bay.

    “The Russians are taking advantage of the withdrawal of those air defense systems from the front lines to make slow but steady gains on the ground,” the institute said.

    Degraded Ukrainian air defenses have also allowed Russia to have more success in targeting critical infrastructure, which the institute said could have “cascading effects” on Ukraine’s ability to build up its domestic weapons production.

    Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that some 500 defense industry enterprises were operating in Ukraine, employing almost 300,000 people to produce shells, mortars, armored vehicles, anti-tank weaponry, electronic warfare systems, drones and other munitions.

    But factories need power. And Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said attacks on energy infrastructure since late March had been the most intense of the war — even more extensive than the bombing campaign in the winter of 2022-23 that nearly collapsed the grid.

    Ukraine has sought to counter the Russian threat by attacking Russian airfields and critical infrastructure in a series of long-range drone strikes, but officials in Kyiv are under no illusions: Without sophisticated Western air defense systems, they are in trouble.

    Kyiv is hoping that Ukrainian pilots currently training on F-16 fighter jets will be flying in the skies above Ukraine by summer, adding another desperately sought layer of defense. But with American assistance still in doubt, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has made a full-throated push to secure Patriot air-defense batteries currently sitting idle in Europe.

     

     

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  11. 1 hour ago, Bevo said:

    Last night as I was going to bed, I was thinking about the chart that @956 Worldwide provided regarding percent of GDP and how poorly the US is doing with regard to Ukraine (I think he said something like .002% of GDP) - I know lame bedtime thoughts, right? I think what spurred the thought was seeing that we give $300M to Iran in foreign aid and real quick it was easy to see that it was a dollar per person. The more important stat is dollars per tax paying family. Can we do that for the Netherlands? Like take the 17.7M. How many households is that? And then what percent of households pay taxes? Then divide that number. I bet $248 per person ends up something like $700 per tax paying household. That is a lot of money even if it is only 1% of their GDP.

    I have no idea how you break it out by who pays taxes or how exactly their taxes are structured there. From what I recall, lots of EU countries depend heavily on VAT taxes, which wouldn't necessarily be based on households. Then, of course, there's income which is. I'm sure @956 Worldwide could help out better with that query than me

    image.png.afa9becff842586750cac2696c6b5a7a.png

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  12. 34 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    One thing to ponder here is that Iran shot something like 350 missiles, drones, and other projectiles at Israel. Nearly all got shot down, but Iran has now established that option as a “reasonable” response and action, anything less will be viewed as not so serious.  
     

    We saw in real time how Iron Dome normalized Hamas rocket attacks and established the expectation that Israel should suck it up and just hunker down defensively.  Israel will be highly inclined to set a difference precedent with Iran. If an embassy warrants 350 projectiles, how many does an attack on Iran proxies warrant? 20? 100?

    This is not a sustainable game for us and Israel.  Deterrence has failed and Iran can’t learn the lesson that it can shoot missiles at Israel with no kinetic response. 

    My hunch (hope) is that Iran doesn't hit back if Israel only goes after the proxies, based on Iranian statements so far.

    Now, if Israel decides to take it to Iran proper, then all bets are off because each will want to hit the other back incrementally harder with every salvo. Israel clearly has the better air defense between the systems we've given them and the US/UK air forces hanging around. Can Israel bet that they know where all the missile sites and nuclear enrichment facilities are?

    We've already stated we're not going to get involved with hitting Iran, but do we help if Hezbollah or Syria jump into the fray? Are the Russians still hanging around Syria to provide air defense? If so, what kind of assets do they have, and is there a risk of a direct confrontation between us and them in the skies over Syria?

    At home here and in the EU, are there going to be sleeper cells that get activated? How much of a distraction would that all be in keeping NATO focused on assisting Ukraine, who's already unhappy that we haven't demonstrated air support to them like we just did for Israel?

    So many questions.

     

  13. This one might be too "political" for the DT thread.

    Ukrainians see ‘hypocrisy’ in Western allies’ defense of Israel.

    For people in eastern Ukraine, where nightly barrages of drones from Russia outpace the military’s overwhelmed air defenses, the response by Western allies to Iran’s aerial assault against Israel this weekend produced uncomfortable comparisons.

    The militaries of the United States, Britain, France and others stepped in to help Israel defend against the fusillade of more than 300 Iranian drones and missiles, nearly all of which were intercepted. A similar number of aerial weapons are fired at Ukraine on a weekly basis, its officials say, with many of the drones in those attacks designed by Iran and now produced by Russia.

    Since the start of this year, Russia has fired 1,000 missiles, 2,800 drones and 7,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya. While Washington and other allies have provided Kyiv with some powerful air defense weapons, they have not directly confronted Russian forces, and Ukrainian officials have long argued that the supplied weapons are insufficient to counter the threat from Moscow.

    In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where 1.3 million people live with nightly air raid alarms, many people expressed anger and disappointment over the weekend that Ukraine’s allies, wary of provoking Russia, don’t give it the same protection as they did Israel.

    “When rockets fly in Israel, the whole world writes about it,” said Amil Nasirov, a 29-year-old singer. “Here, rockets are flying, and we don’t have American bombers that are saving the sky like over Israel.”

    “It’s very stupid; it’s hypocrisy,” he added. “And it’s like some devaluation of Ukrainian lives.”

    Ukraine has begged since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 for more tools to close its sky to Russian missiles. But the first Patriot missile systems from the United States and Germany — the only proven defense against ballistic missiles — did not arrive until the spring of 2023.

    Ukraine also pleaded for F-16 fighter jets, which the Biden administration, which must approve any transfers of the American-made planes, long resisted providing them out of concern that Moscow would see it as an escalation.

    It eventually relented, but Ukrainian pilots are still training on the systems and they are not expected to fly in the skies above Ukraine until this summer.

    Ukrainian officials noted the role that fighter jets played in defending Israel as a sign of their importance in air defense.

    President Volodymyr Zelensky said the response to the Iranian attack was clear evidence that “the world has everything necessary to stop any missiles, Shahed drones, and other forms of terror,” referring to the Iranian-made attack drones that have been a large part of Russia’s arsenal.

    “The whole world sees what real defense is. It sees that it is feasible. And the whole world saw that Israel was not alone in this defense — the threat in the sky was also being eliminated by its allies,” Mr. Zelensky said in his latest nightly address.

    Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said on Monday that while his country has been one of the staunchest military supporters of Ukraine — training thousands of troops and providing tanks and other advanced weapons — Britain could not shoot down Russian drones over Ukraine because it could inflame a wider war in Europe.

    “If you want to avoid an escalation in terms of a wider European war, I think the one thing you do need to avoid is NATO troops directly engaging Russian troops,” Mr. Cameron told Britain’s LBC radio station. “That would be a danger of escalation.”

    The United States remains the chief supplier of the munitions for Ukraine’s best air defense systems. But the last time Congress approved military aid for Ukraine was in October. In the intervening months, Ukraine’s air defenses have been critically depleted, while Russia has greater success in using air power to advance on the front line, attack Ukraine’s energy grid and inflict more casualties against civilians.

    At least 126 people were killed and 478 more were injured in Russian strikes in March, a 20 percent increase compared with the previous month, according to the United Nations.

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  14. Food for thought on some Israeli options

    Israel’s choices in responding to Iran’s attack all come with risks.

    As Israel’s leaders continued on Monday to mull a possible response to the massive Iranian aerial attack over the weekend, they faced several choices, all of which carry their own risks.

    In the past, Israel has hit back hard when its enemies attacked, hoping to discourage further hostilities. A cross-border raid in 2006 by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group, kicked off a devastating monthlong war, and rocket barrages fired by armed groups out of Gaza have escalated into days of heavy fighting and destruction.

    But this time Israel is juggling a host of conflicting interests, as well as some new factors.

    If it does respond to the unprecedented Iranian attack — itself carried out in retaliation for a strike on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria that killed top commanders in Iran’s armed forces — Israel must weigh whether to do so in proportion to the actual results of the Iranian assault, which was largely blocked by air defenses and caused little damage, or to consider what could have happened if more than 300 drones and missiles had actually hit Israel.

    Hard-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government are pushing for an immediate and forceful response, saying that the lack of one will further weaken Israel in its enemies’ eyes. Some Israelis see an opportunity to use military strikes to fulfill the longstanding Israeli goal of degrading Iran’s nuclear program.

    But other Israelis are urging restraint or so-called “strategic patience,” wary, among other things, of taking the nation’s focus away from its war with Hamas in Gaza, the efforts to release its scores of hostages there and its skirmishes with Hezbollah along its northern border, as well as the risk of setting off a broader regional conflict without international support.

    Analysts say the success of Israel and its allies, led by the United States, in blocking most of the Iranian attack has given Israel the leeway to choose how and when to respond, if at all.

    “Israel has the apparent legitimacy to attack Iran,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former major general and national security adviser in Israel who is now at the conservative-leaning Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

    “The other option is to say, we achieved what we wanted by eliminating the Al Quds Force commanders in Damascus, the Iranian attack failed, so let’s do what we need to do,” he said — which means finishing the campaign against Hamas in Gaza and investing in preparations to take on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    “Both are good options,” he said. “Each has pros and cons. It’s a matter of preference.”

    Foreign leaders, chief among them President Biden, Israel’s most important supporter, have been pressing for restraint. Mr. Netanyahu has not publicly threatened Iran since the attack ended on Sunday morning. Other Israeli military and political leaders say they want to preserve and strengthen, not jeopardize, the alliance of Western and moderate Arab countries that, for the first time, came together to repel the Iranian attack and defend Israel.

    The Iranian attack has given Israel a burst of international support after months of censure and opprobrium over the scope of the killing and hunger in Gaza, and some officials say that means Israel should act against Iran only in coordination with its allies.

    “Israel versus Iran, the world versus Iran,” Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, said on Sunday, laying out the choices. “The strategic alliance and the regional cooperation system between us has been seriously put to the test, and now is the time for us to strengthen it. We’ll build a regional coalition against the Iranian threat and exact the price from Iran in the manner and at the time right for us.”

    Israel’s options range from openly striking Iran, symbolically or with full force, to not retaliating at all, a concession that experts say Israel could leverage to encourage further international sanctioning of Iran or the formalization of the anti-Iranian alliance.

    There is a precedent for doing nothing: During the Gulf War of 1991, as Iraq lobbed Scud missiles at Israeli cities, Yitzhak Shamir, then Israel’s hawkish prime minister, exercised restraint at the urging of the Bush administration to preserve the American-led coalition with friendly Arab states.

    Israel could also orchestrate some kind of bloodless cyberattack or revert to the ways of its yearslong shadow war with Iran, relying on spy craft and covert actions against Iranian interests, inside or outside Iran, without claiming responsibility for them.

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  15. 7 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    Maybe respond to an article vs. responding to me. I feel my words may have been presented stronger than what others are saying. And don't worry about me - I don't need to respond to what you have to say so it shouldn't have to be too CR.

    It's part of the US national defence."

    I'm fully aware that the admin's policy is that it won't go on offense with Israel. I also fully disagree with your interpretation that this means we're not interested in deterring Iran, that we can't work in conjunction with Israel in that deterrence, or that our support for their defense is "tepid."

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  16. 20 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    And with the US' tepid backing of Israel

    This is fucking laughable. We just shot drones and missiles out of the sky before they even reached Israel. 

    Quote

     

    the US currently has no interest in deterring Iran

    OTOH, if Israel uses patience and waits until after it exits Gaza and until there is a more favorable environment in Washington, it may be able to actually work in conjunction with the US to deter Iran.

     

    These are both statements I strongly disagree with but can't respond to here because that would be CR.

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  17. 4 minutes ago, Texzilla588 said:

    The attack on the embassy was an attack on Iranian sovereign soil. Just as their attack on our embassy was. Iran has been managing the Houthis attacks on free vessels at sea, seized a ship in the strait of Hormuz, and has poured billions into Hamas and Hezbollah and planned the terror attacks from Gaza. They deserve anything and everything they get back.

    We can keep going back and forth about every fucking thing that's ever happened in the past between the US, Iran, Israel, etc., going to the coup we backed that overturned Iran's duly-elected government and installed an unelected despot 20-some-odd years before them attacking our embassy in Tehran.

    And, yes, I understand that ever since the hostage crisis, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the adversary of both the US and Israel. No. fucking. shit.

    Up to this point, nearly everything that's gone down between Israel and Iran has been conducted through proxies -- very similar to the Cold War the US had with the Soviets. We back groups that fought the USSR, and they back groups that fought us. But what neither of us did was directly and openly attack one another. Right now, we are backing the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia. Would you not expect us to respond if Russia bombed our embassy in Warsaw in retaliation for us helping the Ukrainians out, for example?

    I don't know if you've been paying attention to any of the threads, but our resident international bros clearly explained last week that embassies are off-limits.

     

    Quote

    They have never not stood by any stupidity we have conducted thru the years around the world. To break that commitment and support is a huge issue and one of concern to them, as well as Taiwan, Korea, Japan and others worried about any commitments from us.

    When have I suggested we should break any commitments to supporting the defense of Israel? 

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  18. 32 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

    To be fair, the WWII guys had good training. The Russians will probably just hear the drones and stare up at the sky like idiot children. 

    My country-ass grandma used to have an expression about turkeys being so dumb they'd drown in a rainstorm from looking up and watching it fall.

  19. 16 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    You don't send 100s of ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones into a foreign country's civilian population without intent to damage and kill.

    If that happened to the US, we would not be listening to other countries about using restraint. Israel warned us what was likely to happen in Iraq at pretty much every step along the way. Yet, we think we know what Israel should and shouldn't do. It is pretty funny if you think about it.

    Luckily, Israel is much smarter than us about ME affairs. I have a feeling that they will act much more deliberately than us. But, I also hear that a response is necessary as to stop precedence.

    Did I say Israel SHOULDN'T respond?

    Whatever they do, I certainly hope it's carefully concise and clearly communicated because I, for one, don't want this to turn into a situation where we have to back the current Israel government on one side while Russia/China are backing Iran on the other in a hot war. At the same time, shit's still going down in Ukraine and tempers continue to flair in the Far East over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

    Besides, Bibi's got enough on his plate right now, dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah, a humanitarian crisis, and staying the fuck out of jail. 

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  20. 17 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

    Waitaminute!

    The Turks are basically saying  the US “approved” this attack if the Iranians “limited” its scope?

    WTF? 

     

    Israel bombed Iran's embassy in Syria, which is its "sovereign territory." You are kidding yourself if you don't think Iran didn't feel obligated to respond in kind. They were, however, very careful in telegraphing and communicating their response, letting both Israel and the US know more or less what would happen. That gave everyone a chance to get ready and go through the motions. We told them where the tolerable limits would be, but that does not mean the US "approved" the attack. 

    All of this was carefully choreographed so that Iran would save a little face without it blowing up in everyone's faces by turning a regional conflict involving Israel and Iran into a wider war involving global players backing each side.

    Brat, I'd always thought you'd been a history teacher. Maybe I was wrong, because anyone who has studied the start of World War I should know how hot-headed shit can easily spiral out of control without clear communication of intentions and expectations through diplomatic channels. That's how the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by Serbia ended up getting Russia, Germany, France, and Britain into a cauldron of boiling blood. 

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