Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1801 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:10 pm

I do not see any gap on the far track. I do see branches in the foreground.

A primer on derailments

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1802 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:28 pm

A look at missile systems and military tactics deployed in Ukraine and what could turn the tide
“Ukraine has so many pieces of equipment from so many countries, that keeping them all working and having spare parts for them will be a real challenge,” one expert said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukra ... -rcna42619

The Biden administration this week promised Ukraine $1 billion in additional military aid, including ammunition for precision-guided missile systems mounted on trucks, anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft artillery and short-range rockets, as well as medical supplies and medical vehicles.

The package brings to $9.8 billion the total for United States military aid so far since Russia invaded its much smaller neighbor.

Here NBC News takes a look at weapons systems the U.S. has pledged to send, and whether experts believe they meet Kyiv’s needs as it battles a military with many times its own firepower.

What are they getting?
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition;
20 120 mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition;
Munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
1,000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems;
50 armored medical treatment vehicles;
Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
C-4 explosives, demolition munitions and demolition equipment;
Medical supplies, to include first aid kits, bandages, monitors and other equipment.
One of the most powerful technologies being supplied to Ukraine is the Lockheed Martin-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, used by the U.S. Army since 2007, according to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior adviser at national security think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It has a range of 47 miles and hits targets at a precision of 20 feet.

The other is the surface-to-air defense system, Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, developed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Raytheon Missiles & Defense, which can detect targets 75 miles away and engage a target at 19 miles.


Ukraine’s government has been asking other nations for even longer-range weapons since the war began in February, and it continues to keep the pressure up.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told NBC News last week that if Russia were to continue using old Soviet technology and overwhelming Ukraine’s defenses with an avalanche of continuous shelling, Ukraine would require long-range missiles in order to have any chance of damaging Russian assets like ammunition warehouses.

Cancian said Ukraine has to fight smartly, since it has two-thirds less ammunition than Russia, so each weapon launch has to be precisely targeted and must hit a high-value Russian target.

He said that Ukraine, which began the war with old Soviet weaponry, has done well, given its army has had to come to grips with complex new weapons systems while constantly under fire.

“We are pushing Ukraine through training programs in a few weeks. In comparison, we take a few months to train U.S. Marine Corps infantry,” Cancian said.

What don’t we know?
While the U.S. Department of Defense continues to hold weekly briefings with the media, some military experts now suspect that some more sophisticated weapon technology donations given to Ukrainians are being kept a secret from the world.

On Monday, the Pentagon acknowledged that the U.S. had sent anti-radar missiles to Ukraine for the first time in a press briefing. The weapons have not been mentioned in any of the military aid packages so far announced by the Biden administration.

“It is what is not being talked about that could prove most important [to Ukraine’s war efforts],” according to 27-year veteran British Army tank commander Justin Crump, who was on the ground in Kyiv in July.

“Ukraine has more aircraft than it used to and better systems — this shouldn’t be happening six months into a war with Russia,” Crump said.

He said that Western governments have supplied Ukraine with the M982 Excalibur — a 155 mm precision-guided artillery shell that can be loaded into long-range M777 howitzer guns.

Developed by Arizona-based firm Raytheon Missiles & Defense, the M982 Excalibur is touted as being able to hit any target, at any range, within an extremely precise distance of just 7 feet, according to Cancian.

The Pentagon declined to comment on whether the U.S. was sending Ukraine weapons it has not officially announced.

Ukrainian officials declined to comment on the record.

Air base explosion
On Tuesday afternoon, several explosions rocked the Saki air base in Novofedorivka, located 99 miles behind the Russian front line in Crimea. The incident killed one person, the region’s Russia-appointed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, said in a statement.

Videos went viral on social media as users speculated that the explosions might be caused by long-range weapons, since it would be difficult for Ukraine to attack such a faraway target with short-range artillery.

Several military experts interviewed by NBC News agree. They believe Ukraine was likely using either drones or MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, also known as ATACMS, produced by U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin, which have a range of 190 miles.

“The explosions in Crimea were huge; they destroyed nine Sukhoi Su-24 and Sukhoi Su-33 Soviet aircraft and threw a steel beam through a car some way away,” said Crump, who is also chief executive of geopolitical risk and intelligence consultancy firm Sibylline.

“Ukraine is still being coy on the cause, but clearly something is up,” he added, referring to the possibility that the West has sent more weapons systems to the country than it has officially announced.

Crump is leaning more toward drones. He said Western governments have so far hesitated to provide Ukraine with these longer-range ATACMS, because they fear doing so would be seen by Russia as an escalation.

Are they new enough?
Ukraine has also been vocal in its wishes for new state-of-the-art weaponry, such as the Iron Dome, a mobile air-defense system developed by Israeli firms Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries that the makers say can intercept incoming missiles with a 97% success rate.

But Cancian pointed out that the weapons being donated to Ukraine are not exactly old equipment being tossed out by wealthier nations: Several NASAMS were purchased by the U.S. to protect the White House in the wake of 9/11.

Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based military think tank, doesn’t believe the world’s latest defense innovations are critical to turning the tide in the conflict.

She and Cancian said they feel much more lies in Ukraine’s ability to train up enough personnel to operate its new, often complicated missile systems, because you need to have enough mechanics to maintain the machines, on top of adequate people able to man them.

“F-16 fighter jets would take years to integrate,” Cancian added. “Iron Dome could be helpful, but [even] the U.S. doesn’t really have any. We have been testing some, but we don’t have any [in the field].”

Ukraine must also fully transition to NATO’s standardized ammunition as soon as possible, which would enable more countries to donate compatible artillery and components for when the machines go wrong, Cancian and Pettyjohn said.

“In the end it might come down to some of the more mundane, less sophisticated systems like the 155 mm artillery shell rounds,” Pettyjohn said, referring to large-caliber projectiles typically fired from armored vehicles.

“Right now, Ukraine has so many pieces of equipment from so many countries, that keeping them all working and having spare parts for them will be a real challenge.”

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1803 Post by prospector » Fri Aug 12, 2022 2:28 am

Better be careful, might end up donating enough armaments for Russia to restock at a very good financial rate!

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national ... cf98fa548f

>At the meetings, Ukraine's envoy discussed relations with Australia and New Zealand, including military cooperation, trade, investment, culture and education.

Myroshnychenko emerged optimistic about bilateral relations between the countries.

He was very thankful for the support New Zealand had sent to Ukraine but urged for more.

"Of course the war is brutal in Ukraine our losses are huge, many people get killed and wounded on a daily basis - the destruction is enormous."

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1804 Post by Pontius Navigator » Fri Aug 12, 2022 2:18 pm

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:10 pm
I do not see any gap on the far track. I do see branches in the foreground.

A primer on derailments
Extreme edge, a bit appears to be missing. Interesting film and that might explain what I think of offset damage.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1805 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Fri Aug 12, 2022 2:32 pm

a green leaf and branch.
See the similar angle on the more obvious branches?

Removing the outside rail on a curve was, I thought, the preferred tactic (as in 'The Longest Day').

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1806 Post by Pontius Navigator » Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:29 pm

OK, give you that.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1807 Post by PHXPhlyer » Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:39 pm

It’s not yet clear what caused blasts at a Crimea air base. But analysts say Russia suffered a significant loss

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/12/europe/c ... index.html

When a series of explosions rocked a Russian air base in Crimea on Tuesday, sending Russian vacationers fleeing from nearby beaches, it was clearly an embarrassment for Moscow. Western officials and analysts have since offered competing explanations about the cause.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the explosions – which sent enormous columns of smoke over the surrounding area – were caused by the accidental detonation of ammunition, and that no aircraft had been damaged.

But satellite imagery reviewed by CNN and other media, as well as Western security agencies, show at least eight aircraft were damaged, as was infrastructure at the air base at Novofedorivka, on Crimea’s west coast. One person was killed and 14 injured, the Crimean health ministry said.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense noted the explosions in messages on social media but offered no explanation for them.

On Friday, the UK Ministry of Defence said: “The original cause of the blasts is unclear, but the large mushroom clouds visible in eyewitness video were almost certainly from the detonation of up to four uncovered munition storage areas.

“At least five Su-24 FENCER fighter-bombers and three Su-30 FLANKER H multi-role jets were almost certainly destroyed or seriously damaged in the blasts.”

Western military analysts assessed the air base’s apron was badly damaged and that buildings away from the apron were also damaged.

Crisis and risk analysts at the Cavell Group noted commentary about “crater sizes, a possible Ukrainian SF [special forces] attack, partisans and more, but most indications are Ukrainian modified ballistic cruise missiles were used.”

In any event, the Cavell Group said, the “Saki attack was audacious and highly effective in both damaging Russian reinforcements and striking a significant psychological blow to morale amongst the Russian military and civilians.”

Nearby Crimean beaches were crowded with holidaymakers. There was a subsequent exodus from Crimea of hundreds of civilian vehicles across the Kerch Strait bridge, causing miles-long tailbacks. Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based analytical group, agrees that the jury is still out on what caused the explosions, absent any official statement from the Ukrainians.

“ISW still cannot independently assess what caused the explosions at the airfield – satellite imagery depicts multiple craters and scorch marks, but such damage could have been caused by many things – special forces, partisans or missiles, on-site or from a distance,” ISW said in its update Wednesday.

It also noted that Russian accounts of the incident have been confused.

“Mixed stories in Russian media and among Russian milbloggers indicate that either officials within the Russian Ministry of Defense have competing theories regarding the attack and are sharing them with the media, or that the Kremlin has failed to coordinate its information operation,” ISW said.

A prominent military blogger in Russia, Yuri Podolyak, said Thursday that “judging by the [satellite] images from the Americans, it was just an act of sabotage, a terrorist attack.”

He was also critical of the safety precautions at the air base.

“Storage and ammunition depots were hit. By the way, they were only a couple of hundred meters from the residential area, and they were completely open, which already brings us to the question of what the command of this military unit was thinking about,” Podolyak said. His Telegram channel has 2.2 million subscribers.

“I think it was a combination of sabotage with negligence. When the warehouses were already hit, there was an explosion of fuel and ammunition. I have questions for the command of this air regiment: how is it possible to store ammunition like this?”

Another military blogger in Russia who goes by the name Rybar, with more than 600,000 subscribers, suggested the explosion was likely not caused by a missile strike.

Rybar noted that “none of the huge number of vacationers and residents of Novofedorivka observed the arrival of rockets. Numerous videos from the scene also do not show anything resembling an incoming munition.”

CNN’s review of available imagery did not detect any incoming rockets or missiles, but the base is very close to the Black Sea.

Rybar speculated that a helicopter with a small bomb could have detonated fuel and ammunition, setting off a chain of explosions across the airfield. “The main source of ignition and subsequent detonations was located approximately in the area of one of the aircraft stands,” he said.

While there is no evidence to support this scenario, Ukrainian helicopters have flown deep behind enemy lines before – notably in missions to the besieged Azovstal plant in Mariupol.

Rybar also suggested negligence as a possibiilty. “Similar cases have already occurred in Syria, when the carelessness of local military personnel led to the loss of aircraft.”

Whatever caused the explosions, they could have significant implications for the overall conflict, especially if the attack were to have been carried out with any new long-range weapon system that Ukraine has developed.

The UK Ministry of Defence says that the loss of eight combat jets represents a minor proportion of the overall fleet of aircraft Russia has available to support the war.

But it noted that Saki is the main base for supporting the Russian navy in the Black Sea. “The fleet’s naval aviation capability is now significantly degraded. The incident will likely prompt the Russian military to revise its threat perception,” it said.

It may also cause a re-evaluation of the threat to Crimea which “has probably been seen as a secure rear-area,” the ministry said.

And the Cavell Group said: “Many Russian strategic defences, infrastructure and military sites could be targeted within this range, some crucial to Russia’s invasion.”

Ukrainian commanders have already said that targets in Crimea are on their list.

In an interview earlier this week, Ukrainian Major General Dmytro Marchenko was asked whether targeting the only road bridge into Crimea from Russia across the Kerch Strait would be part of the Ukrainian military’s plan.

“Yes, this is a necessary measure in order to deprive them of the opportunity to provide reserves and reinforce their troops from Russian territory,” Marchenko replied.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1808 Post by boing » Fri Aug 12, 2022 7:54 pm

My guess is that the airfield attack was intended to reduce Russian capability in the event of a Ukrainian push on Kherson. Useful for other purposes including the PR but Ukraine needs to secure Kherson before they can seriously work on the rest of Crimea which is not going to be simple. Blocking off Crimea from the mainland will be relatively easy once the Ukraine gets within Himars range of the (what look like) salt marshes with their limited road and railroad routes. Crimea itself will be much more fun.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1809 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sat Aug 13, 2022 5:55 pm

All still usable Dnipro crossings hit again yesterday. Also..



Kherson is as good as lost to the Russians, and they know it.


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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1810 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:48 am

Antonovsky Bridge hit again last night. Video shows the repair equipment exploding after the strike


Unable to get supplies and ammo across further up at the Nova Kakhovka dam crossing, looks like the Russians set up a depot in an industrial area just off the approach road...which the Ukes promptly found

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1811 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Aug 15, 2022 2:17 pm

Another rail bridge unusable, this one near Melitopol
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/35 ... mayor.html
I think it will be one of the two either side of Taschenak, here
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.7976776 ... a=!3m1!1e3
Since the Ukes also seem have taken out the two rail lines that leave Crimea into Kherson Oblast from the south,
this now means the nearest railhead is over 90km from Nova Kakhovka or Kherson, which is beyond the 90km practical limit
of their truck logistics capability.

A new development is an 'official' attack inside Russian territory - no way do partisans have kamikaze drones. Or was it just another careless smoker? =))

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1812 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:57 pm

Fast forward back to the worst of the Cold War with a government that is in total denial of the risk and likely outcomes!
If readers of Saturday’s Telegraph were hoping for light relief from the Tory leadership election, they would not have found it in their newspaper’s comment pages. “The West should prepare for the real risk of nuclear war,” read a headline atop a column by weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

We live in very dangerous times, De Bretton-Gordon argued. He cited tension over Taiwan; Iran and North Korea’s progress in developing nuclear arms; and Vladimir Putin’s threats, veiled and not veiled whatsoever, of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine and Nato. The war in Ukraine also poses the risk of an accident – “or worse” – at Zaporizhzhia, the nuclear power station currently occupied by Russia. “If we do not contain these threats,” wrote De Bretton-Gordin, “everything else vexing us at the moment will prove horrifically irrelevant.”

So if Britain is to prepare, what preparations ought to be made? Paul Ingram, of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, tells me what the government should be doing to mitigate the harm caused by detonations here or elsewhere. Ingram has just returned from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, where Russian diplomats, he says, “have spent a lot of time trying to change the way in which their statements earlier this year are to be interpreted, and they’re trying to describe them as warnings rather than threats”.

This is a good sign, says Ingram, who for twelve years (2007-2019) was the executive director of the transatlantic British American Security Information Council. There is room, he says, “for a conversation about nuclear rhetoric moving forward” – dialogue that might lower the temperature somewhat.

Ingram is concerned about Russia using nuclear weapons in response to severe military losses; in Nato’s step-ups in the delivery of sophisticated weaponry, he sees escalation. “Any escalation increases the risk.” That risk, he says, “is not imminent, but it is bubbling away behind the scenes.” It is “low-probability, but the impact is so high that I think that the government does need to be preparing.”

One wonders whether the government’s nuclear war preparedness plan is filed next to its Brexit preparedness plan and its coronavirus preparedness plan. “I suspect there aren’t that many preparations going on at the moment,” says Ingram. (In the government’s defence, broadcasting the existence of its plans might inadvertently contribute to the risk of war.)

The government’s most important task, Ingram says, is to avoid escalating that risk. Beyond that, a good first step would be to weigh up the probabilities of detonations here (which would have immediate, catastrophic impact) and abroad (which would affect us indirectly, potentially through a nuclear winter that would damage crops worldwide.) “It’s really difficult to get a clear handle on probabilities,” says Ingram. “It’s easier to get some kind of a handle on consequences. But a judgement is needed on those probabilities.”

Those probabilities, difficult as they would be to calculate remotely accurately, would give an indication of the level of investment that should go into preparing. Ingram uses food supply as an example. “Should we be storing lots of food now? That’s problematic, because that will lead to all sorts of food wastage. But equally, there does need to be some question about a variety of different catastrophes that will require some kind of food stock storage in our response. The government needs to be thinking about that and weighing it up in a reasonable way.”

Another early priority, says Ingram, should be deciding who is responsible for what. “That was a really big hole in the response to Covid,” he says. “It was incredible, really, because the risk of a pandemic was right up there as a top-tier security threat, and yet government departments had no clear idea of who was responsible for what activities and what sort of lines of communications needed to be opened.”

This must not be repeated in the event of a nuclear detonation, says Ingram. “Across critical services, infrastructure and government departments, the government needs to be clear about where responsibilities lie and then have response plans drawn up for the event.”

It is generally presumed that the Ministry of Defence bears these responsibilities. “But the Ministry of Defence is not going to be the department that is first-responding, or providing health responses or other emergency responses. It’s not going to be the department responsible for feeding everybody, or for sanitation, or whatever.”

When asked in March about their contingency preparations, shortly after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, government departments deferred to No 10. But it is easy to imagine the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs being an appropriate candidate to lead contingency planning for food. Or the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, being called on to ensure that our power supply is resilient in the face of catastrophe. “And there would need to be somebody, or a team, responsible for clean water, because water is quite a critical issue post-nuclear exchange because of [radioactive] contamination,” Ingram says. “There would need to be some kind of system for coordinating health responses. And there would need to be a system for rationing all of this, because the need will be much greater than the supply. There’ll be quite tough choices to be made.”

Local governments, Ingram says, “would need to play quite a central role in any response. There needs to be a clear-eyed perspective of what their capacity is likely to be. In those areas where there are actual detonations going off, I think we can assume that local government and any public services would be completely overwhelmed. But there will be other parts of the country that are not directly experiencing those detonations, and they are going to need to mobilise and pull people together and consider what essential services are needed in those circumstances and how they might be provided.”

There will need to be an evacuation plan, to whisk people away should an attack appear imminent. These evacuations would be enormous and time-restricted, posing huge logistical problems. We could learn from the Americans, says Ingram. “They have much more sophisticated plans around evacuation of cities in a variety of different contexts.”

Britain built many nuclear bunkers in the Cold War, a strategy in which Finland – which borders Russia and fears its aggression – has invested vast sums. Finland’s civil service says that its underground network of tunnels could easily accommodate Helsinki’s 630,000-strong population. Ingram, however, sees bunkers as “an individualistic approach. I think we need to be thinking much more in terms of resilience within communities”.

If things start to get hairy, I think the government does need to be considering public information campaigns

The assumption in large, nuclear-armed states such as our own, says Ingram, is that there’s little we can do to prepare for an all-out nuclear war. That shouldn’t inhibit us from preparing for war elsewhere, though. (South Asia is sometimes cited as a risky area: India, which has nuclear weapons, has fraught relations with China and Pakistan, also both nuclear-armed.) The domestic responses to that sort of situation, says Ingram, would still need to be rapid and significant. “They’re going to be different from the ones we’ve been talking about around evacuation and the rest of it. It’ll be much more about trying to secure food supplies and maintain critical infrastructure in the really challenging time when the sun is going to be much reduced” – nuclear blasts would kick soot and dust into the atmosphere, dimming sunlight and causing nuclear winter – “and food suppliers are going to be much curtailed.”

As for attacks directly on Britain, says Ingram, a public information campaign would be premature. Now is not the time to be supplying every British citizen with packs of potassium iodide, nor to be sending households pamphlets (of the kind distributed in the Sixties) containing advice on what to do in the event of an attack. “But if things start to get hairy – and we do have the Russians making significant threats – and there don’t seem to be clear and obvious ways out, I think the government does need at that stage to be considering public information campaigns.”

When new prime ministers assume office, one of their first duties is to handwrite four identical letters: one to each of the commanding officers of Britain’s nuclear-armed submarines. The letter tells the commanding officers what to do if a nuclear strike has destroyed the government. The order is said to be one of the following: retaliation; no retaliation; the commander using their own judgement; or the commander placing their submarine under the command of an allied country.

Writing those letters – choosing the last act of a nation, and whether or not that act will be to turn the other cheek – is perhaps the most solemn duty of a prime minister. Come September, when one of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss assumes office, a new set of letters will be required. When the new prime minister puts pen to paper, they might reflect on what other preparations they might make for nuclear war. And they’ll probably require more than a two-minute scribble.
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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1813 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:23 pm

With respect to the general's experience, I would challenge two points. The first would be to ask exactly what Putin would target in order to respond to severe military losses? A like-for-like response from NATO is guaranteed, on the grounds of establishing a precedent alone, nevermind discouraging further use. I'm sure Putin has been told this explicitly by the USA, France, and Britain anyway.
The second would be to ask what measures the UK could actually take, and at what expense and over what timescale, that would actually make any difference? Not least for the reason that the country is in such a mess already, economically as well as organisationally, that the cure will likely be worse than the disease. Fractionally less completely ****** is really not worth the effort.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1814 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:09 pm

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:23 pm
With respect to the general's experience, I would challenge two points. The first would be to ask exactly what Putin would target in order to respond to severe military losses? A like-for-like response from NATO is guaranteed, on the grounds of establishing a precedent alone, nevermind discouraging further use. I'm sure Putin has been told this explicitly by the USA, France, and Britain anyway.

A good point, but it is predicated upon the the "fact" that we are dealing with a rational actor when it comes to Putin (and his regime), or actors when it comes to some of our own.

The second would be to ask what measures the UK could actually take, and at what expense and over what timescale, that would actually make any difference? Not least for the reason that the country is in such a mess already, economically as well as organisationally, that the cure will likely be worse than the disease. Fractionally less completely ****** is really not worth the effort.

Well put and profoundly depressing for all of that
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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1815 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:19 pm

If Putin is not rational, or likely to become so, then that should be stated as the reason. Using "severe military losses" as the reason implies that the use of nuclear weapons would be used to stop further losses, which is why I asked how same could be achieved.
And if he does go do-lally, then taking any kind of action other than killing him seems pointless.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1816 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:47 pm

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:19 pm
If Putin is not rational, or likely to become so, then that should be stated as the reason. Using "severe military losses" as the reason implies that the use of nuclear weapons would be used to stop further losses, which is why I asked how same could be achieved.
And if he does go do-lally, then taking any kind of action other than killing him seems pointless.
That is why our strategic aim should be his, and his closest cadres, deaths. Easier said than done, but I am sure there are senior, rational elements in the Russian military who, would be secretly relieved by such an outcome, whatever they might say.
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1817 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:50 pm

It's OK if nuclear powers have leaders who are corrupt, lying, philandering sociopaths, senile and murderous appear OK as well, but not actually mad. :D

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1818 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:53 pm

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:50 pm
It's OK if nuclear powers have leaders who are corrupt, lying, philandering sociopaths, senile and murderous appear OK as well, but not actually mad. :D
Therein we collapse into a navel-gazing philosophy... ;)))
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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1819 Post by boing » Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:11 pm

If supply lines and admin are taken out these have fairly long term effects. If someone is taking out comms. look out.

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Re: Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

#1820 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:23 pm

I guess the question is, will we survive a first nuclear strike and emerge as a functional society!
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