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Русский корабль - иди нахуй


Eastwood

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1 hour ago, tokamak said:

Ten different models of tank in the field seems like a logistical nightmare for Ukraine. Better than no tanks, but I wonder if it won’t be as decisive as advantage as it’s being hoped. 

I think you make your tank battalions once you get a pod of the same kind of tanks.  There should be a bunch of T-72 battalions, as that seems to be the most numerous MBT.    One thing the tank coalition chart does not show us is exactly how many of the many many Russian captured tanks have been returned to service in Ukraine. I would love to know the numbers of T 72, T 80 and T 90 tanks that were abandoned after some track problem or they ran out of gas.   I also think that a country begging for tanks will not talk a lot about how many tanks it already has.  Which is likely why we do not know.

And if you have five of this or seven of that that are mechanically different than the others, there will always be a place for essentially a good mobile artillery unit - which is not to say that four or five of one kind will not be helpful supporting Ukrainian infantry.

Even if they find out that a few are prone to breaking down too quickly, you could put them on some high ground protecting the approach to Kyiv or some other strong point.  if it won’t run, it can fire as a fixed emplacement.

 I agree that the creative Ukrainians welcome and can find a spot for everyone.   

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1 hour ago, BamaATL said:

Just to add to that a bit as it applies to this situation.  At the beginning of all this, if I remember correctly it was only the DIA the predicted that the Ukrainians would offer fierce resistance to an invasion.  14 out 15 other intel agencies all predicted a quick fall Kyiv or worse.  So how did everyone get this so wrong?  In my opinion, its over reliance on analytics.  Sure, you can quantify how many tanks somehow has, the number of troops, artillery, etc.  What you can't quantify is the human abstract.  Analytics told our intel people that there was no chance for the Ukrainians, so don't send heavier weapons, etc.   What analytics can't figure is a quantity for poor Russian leadership, the Ukrainian will for freedom and their desire to fight for it.  

Analytics has its place, and it is valuable, but over reliance on it is dangerous, short sighted, and ultimately wrong.  This is the conundrum for all strategic planners globally (and not just war), it's valuable insight, but to what level?

Analytics sucks at predicting the future. Analysts review historical and current data and draw a conclusion about what might happen next. 

I tell my students this all the time: If your analytical model does not perform well in the real world, you haven’t included some really important variables PLUS you may not even know what those variables are. 

My point is that analytics and machine learning are tools. The raw material they need is data. Excluding important variables because they were unobservable, too hard to collect or because their importance was unknown will lead to poor predictive/forecasting results with those tools. 

Analysts have a much better view of what was previously unobservable and I bet the probability of their latest conclusions coming to fruition is increasing over time. 

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2 hours ago, BamaATL said:

Just to add to that a bit as it applies to this situation.  At the beginning of all this, if I remember correctly it was only the DIA the predicted that the Ukrainians would offer fierce resistance to an invasion.  14 out 15 other intel agencies all predicted a quick fall Kyiv or worse.  So how did everyone get this so wrong?  In my opinion, its over reliance on analytics.  Sure, you can quantify how many tanks somehow has, the number of troops, artillery, etc.  What you can't quantify is the human abstract.  Analytics told our intel people that there was no chance for the Ukrainians, so don't send heavier weapons, etc.   What analytics can't figure is a quantity for poor Russian leadership, the Ukrainian will for freedom and their desire to fight for it.  

Analytics has its place, and it is valuable, but over reliance on it is dangerous, short sighted, and ultimately wrong.  This is the conundrum for all strategic planners globally (and not just war), it's valuable insight, but to what level?

I think it's also fair to say Russia did a good job of hiding the fact their military is riddled with corruption and incompetence.

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34 minutes ago, 686 said:

I don’t understand why Lukashenko would admit this:
 

Because he sold his soul and life to Putin to stay in power back when the Belarussian people were ready to hang him.  He no longer has any life or existence outside of what Putin decides he can have.

I will enjoy the day we see his bloated, bloodsoaked corpse being dragged through the streets.

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A while back we were talking about how totally absorbed Russia is in its World War II history past in a way that even patriotic Americans can’t understand. It’s just freaky cultish. I could not remember the term for it. I just found a video that expresses it well. “Pobedobesie!”.  Try to imagine this shit showing up on American TV 80 years after the war 

 

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10 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

A while back we were talking about how totally absorbed Russia is in its World War II history past in a way that even patriotic Americans can’t understand. It’s just freaky cultish. I could not remember the term for it. I just found a video that expresses it well. “Pobedobesie!”.  Try to imagine this shit showing up on American TV 80 years after the war 

 

I could pass on the parades, but the Trampoline Girls were kinda nice.

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15 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Spoiler: pessimism incoming 

 

I think China is going to supply weapons to the Ruskies.

Not a popular opinion but I think it's time for everyone to feel the pain of cutting China off. We've been too siloed in our own world that we need a correction. Hopefully with the benefit of finally unifying our populace similar to post 911.

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2 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Not a popular opinion but I think it's time for everyone to feel the pain of cutting China off. We've been too siloed in our own world that we need a correction. Hopefully with the benefit of finally unifying our populace similar to post 911.

My 3 year old has a higher pain tolerance than the US populace.

China knows that.

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30 minutes ago, The Dog said:


 

No bueno, if true (no reason to suspect it isn't) Bakhmut would be nearly encircled with no way out without taking heavy fire.  At the same time, I have read, that the wagner situation was desperate in terms of munitions.  Leaving Bakhmut will be tough on UFA in a psychological way and russian trolls will act like they have just entered Paris.  Here's to hoping the UFA got its people out of there and that it's all a feint for a crushing counter offensive.  Perhaps by ceding territory they got the wagnerites to exceed what little their supply could actually get to them.  

And yes, I realize that might all be too much to hope for, but fuck those guys, may they all drive stolen Kia's into mine fields.  

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Quote

“Russia’s economy is hollowing out. It is not in freefall, nor is the current economic crisis grounds to assume a political collapse is in the offing. Rather the forecast figures in hand for Russia this year reflect two grim realities: the economy was already operating considerably under its real capacity prior to the invasion and the structural transformation of the economy the Bank of Russia has talked about is happening. Whatever resilience that transformation will eventually achieve will most likely come at a steep price in declining living standards, productivity, and incomes without any countervailing ‘export boom’ to hide the inadequacies and contradictions of the country’s economic policies.”

Short version: hiding how fucked they are for now, but they will be fucked eventually due to sanctions.   they made so much money on highly priced gas and oil in the run up and immediately after the invasion that the savings account is stopping the pain for the short term. Having lost their gas and oil market, and that market experiencing lower prices for what they can sell, the rapidly diminishing piggy bank propping them up will eventually not be enough to stop the pain.

We tend to forget the economic hardships of Great Britain after World War II.  It took them decades to dig out of the amount they spent on the war and the loss of income from their former colonies. And nobody was sanctioning Britain after the war.  

I hope we demand that sanctions continue forever after Ukraine wins, unless half of all Russian export revenue goes to Ukraine’s recovery 

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5 hours ago, BamaATL said:

I have read some of his stuff, and some it has merit, but in my opinion he cherry picks some valid points and ignores something that isn't quantifiable.  He point's toward geography and natural resources being the principle reason the US became and is a super power.  To a large to degree that is true, but he completely glosses over the biggest reason/resource we actually have; which is our people, our diversity, and our collective freedom to innovate.  That isn't quantifiable, you can't quite count an abstract concept like innovation as it relates to increased immigration like you can count how many navigable rivers we have or oceans we border.   Nor can you count/quantify the ability for a normal person to invent revolutionary concepts and quite literally come from nothing to being a global game changer.  While it's true that can happen in other parts of the world, and it does, historically speaking it doesn't happen at near the rate it does here.  The truth is, the US does well because ordinary people, from all sorts of backgrounds have opportunity.  All the rest of that is just icing on the cake.  

While our immigration is a massive factor in that it has been both a source of cheap, disposable labor, but also a massive contributor to our tech innovations (Manhattan Project, space program, electronics/computing in general, were all built up with the help of Europeans/Jews fleeing Germany, or Germans fleeing the Soviets), I think our natural resources and geography could be our biggest factor.  We've never been at the mercy of another nation in terms of food or fuel production, and nobody is going to fuck with us in any meaningful way.

Unlike most of Asia and Europe, we haven't had to rebuild our industrial centers/production since the 1860s (and even then they were quickly rebuilt, and we did so even as we expanded rapidly westward (thanks also to the afore-mentioned immigrants)).  Large Asian and European population/industrial centers have had to be rebuilt, sometimes multiple times, over the last century, and both of those continents, particularly Europe, have had massive brain drains as a result of those wars.  

Meanwhile, here in the US, everybody from Eli Whitney up to John Deere and then on to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and their successors., have not had to deal with the shit that Europen inventors/innovators have (I know Edison's history, so don't correct me about his "inventions") every few decades.  In some cases, those European problems have benefited America, either because of brain drain and the talent coming here, or because we were able to move goods and open markets when they were trying to put roofs over their heads.

This sums up even what the victors had to deal with:

4 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

We tend to forget the economic hardships of Great Britain after World War II.  It took them decades to dig out of the amount they spent on the war and the loss of income from their former colonies. And nobody was sanctioning Britain after the war.  

Ukraine is in the same boat - after they win, they've got a lot of rebuilding to do, but I think Europe, the US, Japan, etc. are going to help with that ASAP.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

While our immigration is a massive factor in that it has been both a source of cheap, disposable labor, but also a massive contributor to our tech innovations (Manhattan Project, space program, electronics/computing in general, were all built up with the help of Europeans/Jews fleeing Germany, or Germans fleeing the Soviets), I think our natural resources and geography could be our biggest factor.  We've never been at the mercy of another nation in terms of food or fuel production, and nobody is going to fuck with us in any meaningful way.

Unlike most of Asia and Europe, we haven't had to rebuild our industrial centers/production since the 1860s (and even then they were quickly rebuilt, and we did so even as we expanded rapidly westward (thanks also to the afore-mentioned immigrants)).  Large Asian and European population/industrial centers have had to be rebuilt, sometimes multiple times, over the last century, and both of those continents, particularly Europe, have had massive brain drains as a result of those wars.  

Meanwhile, here in the US, everybody from Eli Whitney up to John Deere and then on to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and their successors., have not had to deal with the shit that Europen inventors/innovators have (I know Edison's history, so don't correct me about his "inventions") every few decades.  In some cases, those European problems have benefited America, either because of brain drain and the talent coming here, or because we were able to move goods and open markets when they were trying to put roofs over their heads.

This sums up even what the victors had to deal with:

Ukraine is in the same boat - after they win, they've got a lot of rebuilding to do, but I think Europe, the US, Japan, etc. are going to help with that ASAP.

And the Gubment contract boners going around in the US will be lobbying heavily for continued support of our Freedom Fighting Brothers and Sisters in Ukraine.

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4 hours ago, BamaATL said:

In my opinion, the Ukrainians are employing a modern day Fabian strategy.  The best and simplest example of this is George Washington during the Revolutionary War.  Washington kept getting the British to chase him around and exhaust themselves doing so, in the hopes that eventually the French would arrive combined with the limited resources the British had in country.  Once the timing was right, it was time to strike.  Obviously, this proved to be correct (This is a gross oversimplification of it).  The Ukrainians are doing the same thing in a modern warfare landscape waiting for the international coalition of equipment and munitions to be in place.

Washington does not get nearly enough credit for the campaign he waged, and the people he surrounded himself with.

4 hours ago, BamaATL said:

Interestingly, there are rumors that the Russians are now attempting to shift to a parallel strategy of their own.  The thought is that they are attempting to consolidate their gains, only defend (if true this clearly hasn't been fully implemented) and I suppose wait for Chinese weapons.  In the meantime, they hope to exhaust Ukrainian resources (I think this is a fools errand with what is coming).  

I don't think the Chinese could supply them fast enough, even if things opened up a bit, plus the Russian's logistic chains for getting stuff into Ukraine is shit.

But even if they could, the Ukrainians have shorter internal lines to move stuff around, they are fighting on their home turf, and it's easier for them to receive treat and get R&R.

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