Putin's Russian expanding to be the old USSR

Void · 2022-04-06 15:01:45

I suppose I am being a fool to make this post.

So, then knocked on the doors, the man comes out and says dah! Then the do the next house, same thing. And onward. Then a bunch of evenly spaced bodies on a street, some have hands tied behind their backs. None tried to hide, or run away?

And then, aren't all males between very young and up to 60 supposed to be in the Ukraine military now? So, why are they hiding in their houses? Shouldn't they be in groups and behind defensive positions?

But if they refused to help the Ukraine side, why did the Russians kill them?

I may not see what I should see.

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On the other hand, you can find lots of dead bodies, if you want to make a propaganda. Who? I don't know. Stupid people on the western side?

Such a picture will tell the Ukrainians, that if you resist the Russians, they will kill you. Or it may say run away to the west.

The Russians might like both. Get rid of those who resist them or subjugate those who do not resist.

So, maybe the Russians would create such propaganda. The Mongols would have approved. When the Mongols came your choice was to resist and be slaughtered or submit and pay tribute.

------

Here is where I part company with Peter Zeihan, to a degree. There can be much for the Russians to gain in all of this.

-The people who flee to the west can be "People Trafficked". You part them from their property, and send them west, and then they are poor labor for the countries where they flee to. Also some can be "Sex" trafficked. If I understand correctly the Russians are fairly connected with some of those who do such things. Also the people who flee, can be spies for Russian in some cases.

-Then there is such parts of the Ukraine that you and your types get control of. No farming this year, maybe the next. The land lies fallow, and may give richer crops in later years. The people who stay in Ukraine depend on you for food for now. It will be either loyalty to Russia, or hunger.

-The oil and gas? Well apparently, the permafrost wells might be shut down and freeze shut. But they might have found ways to reduce that by now. If not, then it is still proven oil reserves that can be tapped later.

-The Russians end up controlling more of the Black Sea.

-I don't think harsh language is going to stop them.

-We also don't want Russia to crumble. Do we want the nukes to go to terror groups, inside and outside of Russia?

It is a screwed up situation.

------

But there is more. Peter Zeihan subscribes to the notion that growing population lifts the economic boat(s). Likely true.
But if your labor force becomes automation and robotics, what good are the excess people? They will just want goods and services from you. So, send them away from their land, participate in trafficking them, then later farm a depopulated area with automation and robots.

Nasty.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-04-06 15:18:23)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-06 20:17:06

The death toll of the Russian are getting those families very upset at the war as it drags on.
Britain says heavy fighting, Russian air strikes continue in Ukraine's Mariupol as residents are hanging on

Woman in Bucha said Russian troops came to her house, said 'we have come to liberate you,' then killed her husband in front of her

The fact that we are telling the world what is happening before its done has been mostly available with U.S. Satellites Spying on Russia’s War Tap Commercial Technology

Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian soldier captured in an ambush outside Kyiv

kbd512 · 2022-04-07 04:47:39

Void,

I see that you fail to grasp how little the average civilian understands about war. To start with, Russia probably has a bunch of street thugs in their military, in lieu of prison time. Street thugs know how to get what they want from other people when the other people follow a set of rules that they don't. So... 10 guys with rifles tell you they'll rape your wife and children to death in front of you unless you come outside to "talk to them". You don't have a pistol, much less a rifle, and may never have fired a weapon at any point in your life, let alone pulled a Rambo and taken on entire military units by yourself. What do you do at that point? They can kill anyone they want to, if they're unarmed.

Now do you understand why we have the Second Amendment?

There are plenty of troubled young men, Americans who I've known, as well as people from other countries, who did behave exactly like that. It's not a problem with Russia or Russian men or Russian culture... It's a problem with no male role model to teach them right from wrong. Put that same person in a setting where there basically are no rules, except the ones they choose to follow, and that's a recipe for genocide and worse. That's why we, as civilians, require the right to keep and bear arms, should be well-trained to actually use them, and then actually use them against anyone who behaves that way.

Goverments protect themselves. Governments exist to perpetuate their own existence. They do not exist to protect Joe Schmo walking down the street. When times are good, there may be at least the pretense of "caring about you", but when times are bad "the government" is nowhere to be found, except for doing incomprehensibly anti-human crap like this- mass murdering and raping civilians because many of the people they hire do a great job of hiding their immorality when they think nobody is paying any attention to them.

Go and "hide somewhere"? You can't be serious, except that you are. Where the hell would you take your family to run off to when it's cold enough to freeze any unprotected person solid during the day time? Would you leave the one place where you have some food and shelter and possibly some water? To do what, exactly? Play soldier while attempting to take care of 5 year olds and 75 year olds?

The only thing that stops this crap is when every adult on the block comes out to greet these little bastards with a hail of gunfire. After they lose a few of their own, and assuming they lack any significant fire support, then they either run away or regroup to formulate a better plan of attack. The best and only realistic option is to ambush them and kill all of them. If you do it correctly, then there won't be any "regrouping" for them. You need rifles to do that, preferably equipped with decent optics so you can kill them from a distance before they have any realistic ability to fight back.

Russia will slide back into the anarchy that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Nothing can stop that now. Ukraine will be left devastated for a generation or two. We missed our opportunity to prevent this from happening because a dementia patient and his bi-polar side show are either ruining or not running America, take your pick. All the adults in the room left the moment President Trump left office. That's a hell of a thing to say about a textbook narcissist who refuses to admit defeat, but for some strange reason he actually cares about his own people, so he dis-enrolled himself from the Party of Derp and refused to be a Derpistani after having been a Democrat for nearly all of his life. What we should be doing, post-haste, is arming Taiwan to the teeth so that any similarly self-destructive venture that the Xi or his Politburo were planning to pursue, is headed off before they commit to the same level of idiocy as Putin and his lackeys. It'd be great if at least some of these dictators weren't so stupid that they ultimately destroy their own country, but none of them are. It's a character flaw. Once you start believing your own BS, only bad things can happen.

Calliban · 2022-04-07 05:49:16

I think this invasion has laid bare to world how poorly organised the Russian army is. Many of the troops had no idea where they even were. The Russians failed to gain air superiority before bringing in transport aircraft and helicopters! Their logistics were so poor that many of their troops ran out of food and fuel and had abandon their vehicles and walk back to the border. They appear to be poorly supervised. These people had better pray that they never have to face a really well organised army. The US army would wipe them out in days. Any of the much smaller Western European forces would wipe them out.

Agreed about the need for an armed citizenship. During my final days at university I went with some friends to the university rifle club. I was a spectator and would have joined if more time had remained. They used .22 bolt action rifles, some with telescopic sights and some without. I was amazed by how accurate they were. With a telescopic sight, they could have shot a penny out of my fingers and 100m and I'm pretty sure they could have got a head shot at 200m.

A citizenry armed with these could not be conquered by men on the ground, especially if those men were armed with anything as poorly accurate as AK-47s. I am frankly amazed that the Ukrainians, who have lived with the threat of Russian invasion for 30 years now, did not take the sensible step of arming and training their citizens with bolt action rifles. They would cost maybe $500 each. A million men armed with these would have annihilated the invading Russian army.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-07 05:59:06)

Terraformer · 2022-04-07 06:04:45

This is something that irks me about Ukraine -- they started conscription after being invaded. If this had been Switzerland or Israel, it would be called mobilisation, and would have occurred before Russians started coming over the border. They'd had eight years to copy these countries.

Not blaming Zelensky for that though. He took office in 2019, about eight months before everything went crazy over COVID. Most of the blame for not getting the country ready has to fall on his predecessors. But he's learned the lesson now -- you either make friends with the big country next door, friends with a big country that will fight them for you if need be, or make yourself too difficult to eat. And those first two are no longer options for Ukraine, if they ever were.

Calliban · 2022-04-07 06:23:01

Zelensky is in power thanks to a coup funded by George Soros and the CIA and ably assisted by none other than Hunter Biden. Trump was naive enough to ask the Ukrainian gangsters for evidence that Hunter Biden and the other crooks in Washington had illegally put them in power! Basically, asking the Ukrainian crooks to incriminate themselves and their buddies in the US. Trump was dangerously naive in so many ways. Thanks to the Russians, Zelensky, the new world order Zionist Jewish stooge has been made to look a hero, rather than the gangster that he actually is.

Void · 2022-04-07 07:59:07

Hey associates, I appreciate your willingness to try to illuminate me. I by no means am military kbd512, I sort of spoke understanding I was going to get some feces thrown at me. It is OK. I do want to illustrate that we need to be careful to keep our heads in all of this.

I had an associate at work who is now passed, but he claimed that he had seen pictures of this alleged activity by Germans.

Bayonet Baby:
https://antzml.wordpress.com/2011/02/25 … ference%29.

I am just saying that a verbal description of a picture of bodies neatly lined up on a city street, needs to be a concern for our ability to understand what is real, and what we are told is real. It could be totally real. I don't know. But for all I know, those bodies are not even dead. I suppose if I had closeups, I might determine it.

I have recently seen an article saying some of these bodies had identification that indicated that they were allied to the Russians. I just don't know.

We are in a predicament where we are allied to former fascist states. This was a result of having to work with them because the Soviets had a cult religion that would have caused them to try to conquer all.

But if you look at it, even the French could easily have joined the other Fascists, it was most likely the loathing of the Germans that prevented them from entirely doing so.

It is my belief that our government is infiltrated by globalists, and that we are now almost a colony of Europe, those former fascist states.
While they may not have a conscious malice towards our way of life, they are causing an imbalance. And to a large degree the Dems are involved.

I may offend some here, perhaps kbd512, but in the civil war, the intention of the south was to push slavery states all through so called Latin America, (Which is also Indian America) And given that power, it is very unlikely that they would have left the North alone, but would have tried to convert it to slave as well, at least the parts that the British did not conquer with them.

The French were in Mexico, and the British in Canada. We owe our freedom to the likelihood that the British were not "All In" on this plan.
In fact all along, in our existence, while the British were a threat, in many cases, they did what was OK for us.

There has been a desire to call the Civil War, the war between the North and South. It was more some states against the federal. But you have to understand that it is likely that powers in those states were colluding with the British and French (Not all of them), and it would have been very easy for the French and British to have finished the USA off after the South would have broken away.

Abraham Lincon worked with the Russians to help prevent that. Here it is: https://www.americancivilwarforum.com/t … 20side.%20

The Russians were afraid of the other Europeans also fearing that their navy would be bottled up on places like the White Sea. So they made a deal with the USA, for their Navy to hang out in our ports.

I have studied timing events, and this was supposed to be a time of working with the Russians again, but the European Imperialists have managed to drive a wedge between us.

Do I trust the Russians at this point? No, they have plenty of reasons to be unhappy with us as we have aligned ourselves with the offspring of the Western Roman Empire. Yet again they try to push into the North, while trying to be masters. Very not American in their behaviors.

But we are at odds about oil. Of course both the Americans and Russians want to sell oil, along with the "Big Guys". Putin has said that he thinks Fracking is immoral Well, ya........Sure......

See, you have to really watch out. It would have possibly been with glee that some Europeans and others would have loved to see the USA and Russian further sap each other's energy.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-04-07 08:17:30)

kbd512 · 2022-04-07 16:20:06

Void,

I'm not trying to give you crap over this. I was trying to explain why this didn't work out the way you thought it should. It's not a critique, it's an observation of human behavior from first-hand experience working in overseas countries. Essentially, it boils down to understanding that Rambo was a movie intended to be entertaining to watch. In real life vanishingly few people could do what Rambo did, and virtually all of those people are in the military or in prison, which is exactly where Rambo ended up after his tour of duty in Viet Nam.

Most people don't have that kind of willingness to fight, nor are they in any way comparable to someone like Edward "Bear" Grylls who can jaunt off to the local forest and survive indefinitely. You have to be taught those things, but there are few places that teach such skills, to the detriment of civilians and human civilization everywhere. Some of what it takes to survive the worst that humanity can visit upon itself simply cannot be taught, either- it has to be experienced and then used as an object lesson about what not to do.

The Russians have no compunction about killing anyone they view as their enemy. They invaded a sovereign nation that was not at war with them, those people then resisted mightily with outside assistance, and yes some of them were civilians, so the Russian soldiers viewed what they did as killing their enemies who were trying to kill them. Whether or not that's the correct way to view what happened is a matter of opinion, but I can guarantee you that that's how the Russian soldiers thought about what they did (mass murdering unarmed Ukrainian civilians).

I honestly don't know what "The South" would've done had they seized power in America from "The North", but I'm glad we never had the opportunity to find out. The loss of life on both sides was regrettable, but slavery was intolerable, so it simply "had to be that way". "The Way of the Gun" is also "The American Way", for better or worse. Even though I live in The Southland and have come to love its people and customs and traditions, I was born in The Northland, and I view this from the same standpoint as my fellow Republican, President Abraham Lincoln. To wit, "The hand that makes the corn gets to raise its hand to its mouth and eat the corn." I believe that with all my heart and always have. I do not believe in any form of socialism or exploitation of people and never will. That is evil, plain and simple, and it matters not who does it or for what reason.

Void · 2022-04-07 20:25:07

That is very generous of you kbd512. I had a bad nights sleep last night, but in general, I think I am all out of wisdom. I do Dum just fine though. I hope what must be, will be the best version of what it could be.

Done.

louis · 2022-04-09 15:23:13

You seem very angry about corruption in Ukraine which has been invaded but not about the far worse corruption in Russia that has done the invading.

Calliban wrote:

Zelensky is in power thanks to a coup funded by George Soros and the CIA and ably assisted by none other than Hunter Biden. Trump was naive enough to ask the Ukrainian gangsters for evidence that Hunter Biden and the other crooks in Washington had illegally put them in power! Basically, asking the Ukrainian crooks to incriminate themselves and their buddies in the US. Trump was dangerously naive in so many ways. Thanks to the Russians, Zelensky, the new world order Zionist Jewish stooge has been made to look a hero, rather than the gangster that he actually is.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-09 20:21:28

There is so much dis-information out there that seems credible but in reality it is a lie that if said enough time by the biased seems to be the fact when its not.

The retreat from Kyiv followed by the genocide of Bucha has been replaced with the Russia strikes Ukrainian airbase, destroying aircraft and an ammunition depot. There has also be an impact on the Russian people as well with Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War from paratrooper units refusing to go to in the street riots. The weapons have continued to get into the Ukraine hands so that they can continue to fight a much larger enemy. The game is shifting but the fight is still going to be over a long period of time. First NATO country sends Ukraine powerful surface-to-air missiles to shoot down Russian aircraft and cruise missiles.
It appears the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson did go to Kyiv showing their support for Ukraine by traveling to the nation’s capital for face-to-face meetings with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-10 07:22:43

Germany — Europe's biggest economy — so dependent on Russian natural gas

‘More damage to us than them’; Germany resists EU ban on Russia’s gas as new sanctions prepared over Ukraine war
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/ … as-gas-new

Rep Donalds: Putin Continues This War Because of Biden's Weakness On The World Stage
https://rumble.com/v10h56t-rep-donalds- … -worl.html

Russian T-72 Falls Of Bridge In Ukraine
https://funker530.com/video/russian-t-7 … n-ukraine/
'A Russian T-72 main battle tank was found abandoned after it was accidentally driven off a bridge. The tank rolled onto its side and appears to have become irrecoverable. However, it's likely that a Ukrainian farmer will be along shortly with some tow straps.'

British PM makes surprise visit to Ukraine for talks with Zelenskyy
https://www.onenewspage.com/video/20220 … -talks.htm

Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a "show of solidarity" on a surprise visit to Kyiv.

Gen. Milley Admits It 'Certainly Is Possible' That Biden's Afghanistan Debacle Influenced Putin on Ukraine
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1359858267550912528

Ukraine on Fire a political film by OliverStone the censored and banned documentary?
https://gettr.com/post/p14i5yd0200

Douglas Abbott Macgregor a retired U.S. Army Colonel and government official and television commentator
https://www.air.tv/watch?v=76ue72YhRDSvFDVt8GiMIg

Antonov Destroyed, World's largest plane, Antonov An-225 Mriya was blown up. An-225 known as Mriya was to transport its space-bound rocket. MiG-105, part of the Spiral program, was a crewed test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing. It was a visible result of a Soviet project to create an orbital spaceplane. The MiG 105 was nicknamed "Lapot". Polyus spacecraft also known as Polus, Skif-DM, as a prototype Soviet orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. Just as the US developed the Space Shuttle, the USSR also worked on a similar reusable, crewed space vehicle. The project was known as the Buran program.

'destroyed An-225 Mriya at Hostomel next to a destroyed Russian VDV BMD-2. Looks like some of the other aircraft survived.'
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1509990490887884804
Vid where you can click on subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuQGvi_R8zg

Japan to take more sanctions against Russia over 'war crimes': PM
https://mainichi.jp/mainichi.jp/english … in/063000c

SpaceNut · 2022-04-10 18:15:57

Elon Musk 'donated' Starlink terminals to Ukraine. U.S. taxpayers paid SpaceX millions for it.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) paid SpaceX for 1,333 Starlink terminals to send to Ukraine, according to a new report in the Washington Post, At a price of $1,500 per terminal, the government agency spent around $2 million for the hardware. SpaceX also sent an additional 3,667 terminals and delivered service to them.
But USAID also paid around $800,000 in transportation costs to deliver these terminals to Ukraine. In total, U.S. taxpayers paid SpaceX more than $3 million.

kbd512 · 2022-04-11 11:48:10

SpaceNut,

FYI, the guy who wrote that piece, one "Matt Binder", is a leftist. I thought far-right-wing media were attacking Elon Musk. Everyone on the right knows this is the left pointing fingers at us over what leftists are actually doing, but it's still entertaining to watch.

Why are leftists re-tweeting other leftists attacking fellow leftists?

Are leftists discovering that billionaires who vote the same way they do are not as altruistic as they thought?

I think what Elon Musk did for Ukraine is great, but let's stop pretending that rich people stay rich by giving things away to the peasants. That's not how the world works. It never has worked that way. Anyone who thinks it does is not honest or was born yesterday.

Elon Musk used our tax money to give the Ukrainians something that the American tax payers paid for, so that after the war he can probably get business deals in Ukraine for StarLink internet service, since all of their land infrastructure is likely to be wrecked by then. Our government still wants our businesses to make money, so this was seen as an acceptable trade. I'm on the right and don't vote the same way Elon does, but even I think this was acceptable.

Your government gave tens of billions of dollars worth of American weapons to Ukraine as a gift under both Republican and Democrat Presidents. Heck, we gave the Taliban $28B worth of American weapons under the village idiot you voted for. There's no guarantee that said tax money will ever be paid back. $3M doesn't count as pocket change to these people, so long as they're playing with other peoples' money.

kbd512 · 2022-04-11 13:29:22

Given the number of Russian tanks destroyed in combat or damaged in accidents, I have to wonder what the Ukrainians could possibly want them for. The engines might be useful as portable generators if they're reliable. The smoke grenade launchers are useful. If the cannon could be dismounted and used as a towed howitzer then that could be very useful for ambushes or attacking infantry. However, the moment Russian tanks are engaged by modern RPGs or ATGMs, they get obliterated pretty much every single time. We saw the same thing happen to the Abrams in Saudi Arabia's war with Yemen, where one to two men operating portable Russian-made Koronet AGTMs disabled or outright destroyed them. All variants of the Abrams have much better armor protection than the T-72s, but the result was the same. Even relatively small guided missiles win the firepower argument convincingly.

It's time to admit that the era of tank-on-tank warfare is coming to an end. Aerial drones and individual soldiers are laying waste to main battle tanks without considerable infantry support. If you have to surround your MBTs with slow-moving infantry, transported to the scene of the battle in their much more vulnerable APCs / IFVs, then why bother with the tanks? Every time I see a guy with a missile launcher, I know that there's a dead tank and likely a dead tank crew on the other end. If 50 tons of steel can't provide adequate protection from 20 pound or larger warheads, then there's little point to increasingly expensive failures to protect against such weapons.

The most practical defense against these small and relatively low cost guided weapons is to simply not be sitting inside a massive, easy to target vehicle when that missile inevitably shows up. If there is such a thing as a practical means of intercepting these missiles, then such a system could also be mounted to much smaller and less obtrusive vehicles that aren't as easily detected by the human ear, never mind all the other advanced electro-optical sensors found on modern battlefields, from many miles away.

I think much smaller and lighter single-occupant infantry fighting vehicles are the way forward. A tankette that mounts a pair of SAMs or ATGMs or 30mm automatic cannon or 81mm mortar is sufficient for practical infantry support. If the vehicle protects against small arms fire and near-misses from artillery shells, then that's sufficient. Such vehicles will be a small fraction of the size of a main battle tank, smaller than many subcompact cars, thus far less noticeable from a distance, and more survivable on a modern battlefield as a result.

Whenever such vehicles are inevitably lost during real shooting wars, their loss will be far less burdensome to the tax payers. 1 tanker is lost, rather than 3 to 4. Each machine should be less expensive to field and operate than the monstrosities we're currently using. The drastically reduced fuel consumption should decrease the length of the logistics tail as well. The advantage to having tanks was mobility and the firepower of its cannon against infantry or other less well-protected targets. Highly effective single-person-portable missiles negated the firepower advantage, and their mobility is no better than any other tracked off-road vehicle. Tanks could still be highly effective in desert environments where few terrain obstructions exist, but artillery and missiles would also be every bit as effective there.

US attack helicopters and jets armed with missiles and bombs defeated a much larger ground combat force in Iraq in a matter of weeks. The ground forces simply mopped up remaining Iraqi ground maneuver units. They would've been every bit as effective with much smaller vehicles, arguably more effective since they wouldn't have been as vulnerable to running out of fuel as the Abrams was. Something like the Camcopter drone that can carry a pair of Javelins can provide organic air support to these ground maneuver units, continuously encircling and ambushing larger / slower / less maneuverable armored vehicle columns at-will, either from the ground or from the air.

Anyway, these Wiesel-type tankettes would attack in swarms, using their helicopter drones to scout ahead of themselves, picking off tanks and APCs / IFVs using Javelins or NLAWs, firing 30mm M230LF chain guns (direct fire) or Mk19s (airburst fire) or 81mm mortars (indirect fire) to suppress infantry counter-attacks with high explosives. The drones would provide real-time battlefield observation to the swarms of small vehicles so that unit commanders can apply constant pressure to enemy armored units. This requires some coordination, but an overhead picture of all nearby friendly and enemy vehicles would simply overwhelm any adversary without similar capabilities. Keeping each vehicle small / light / maneuverable, by not attempting to mount large numbers of cannons or missiles onto a single vehicle, assures that the formation can rapidly overtake and ambush slower enemy vehicles. Battles are typically won or lost by both seeing first and accurately shooting first, not by festooning men and vehicles with ammunition and equipment.

Calliban · 2022-04-11 14:15:55

I rather like the power armour that the Martian marines wore in The Expanse. Basically, bionic body suits powered by a fuel cell or small engine, driving hydraulics. Is there any way of building something like that?

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-11 14:29:39

Ukraine news live: EU warns of major Donbas attack in 'next day' as Putin hosts first European leader in Moscow since war

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-news … o-12541713

Russian journalist who protested Ukraine war on-air is named correspondent for German news station

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marina-ovs … s-channel/

Biden warned: Moving US Space Command leaves US vulnerable to Putin attack

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/ … sia-attack

Emmanuel Macron calls Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki 'far-right antisemite' after criticism of his Putin calls

https://www.three.fm/news/world-news/em … tin-calls/

Ukraine winning the war but Zelenskyy, Biden and Putin face big choices

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ukraine … ecca-grant

Greece is sometimes a strange one there seems to be some kind of loose cultural link with the language and Russians or Eastern culture, some Greek feel exposed by the 2008 recession and the EU Debt Crisis - there also seems to be British and perhaps CIA subversive influences in Greek life fear of them facing a "communist takeover" during the Coldwar, and also a thing going back to the days of Rome and the split between Rome and the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire. Another thing I noticed is a lot of edgy artists or taboo patriot comedians or media people sometimes seem more sympathetic to Russia or is that misguided anger from within their own nation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMHE0mahXw
'Clashes between police and local workers who are trying to stop the dispatch of NATO military equipment to Ukraine'

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-04-11 14:31:41)

clark · 2022-04-11 23:53:36

Chat about dead people. Chat about people being killed about other people. You are sad. What the heck is wrong with you? If you think the assault and war is okay, own it. If you don't, what the f*ck are you doing?

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-12 05:32:49

Ukraine - Civilian Drives Through Active Gunfight to Escape Kherson
https://funker530.com/video/civilian-dr … e-kherson/

Footage recorded by a Ukrainian Civilian fleeing the fighting in Kherson shows them driving through an active gunfight between Ukrainian and Russian forces to escape the city.

Majority in Finland now want to join NATO, Russia threatens Sweden and Finland with “serious military-political consequences”
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wi … o-83126927

Russia's war to shrink Ukraine economy 45%, World Bank says
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai … c26836c122

Putin 'purges' 150 FSB agents in response to Russia's botched war with Ukraine
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/puti … -lf9k6tn6g

This is another reward for kissing their ass for decades and censoring 28 pages?

Saudi Arabia TV mocks Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news … 2022-04-12

TV in Saudi islamic State Brutally Mocks Biden as Doddering Old Man

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/saudi-state … irst-lady/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-04-12 05:33:38)

Terraformer · 2022-04-12 07:53:43

Calliban wrote:

I rather like the power armour that the Martian marines wore in The Expanse. Basically, bionic body suits powered by a fuel cell or small engine, driving hydraulics. Is there any way of building something like that?

Hmm. Would need to be very reponsive. Though unpowered exoskeletons still offer an advantage by transferring the weight of carried objects from the body to the exoskeleton. The army should probably demand the level of R&D for infantry that the navy and air force get for ships and planes.

I wonder when we'll see the first modern naval battle. We last had one in... WWII? I'm not sure carriers and frigates are going to hold up now, not with satellites and missiles. Great Power militaries seem to be designed to fight WWII.

kbd512 · 2022-04-12 21:25:56

Powered armor suits would enable infantry to carry weaponry to disable armored vehicles. I don't think such devices could enable the wearer to move much faster than a dead run in any practical sense. However, the ability to practically carry a 30mm cannon (manual or semi-auto only) or pair of Stingers or Starstreak or Javelins or NLAWs would become a practical proposition for an individual soldier. It would also largely eliminate the advantages of armored vehicles over infantry. I think infantry so-equipped would present a serious threat to any traditional armored force comprised primarily of large and slow and loud MBTs / APCs / IFVs. Armored vehicles can withstand hits that no practical powered armor suit ever could, but a major contributor to the failure of these armored columns in Ukraine is specifically because they are such large / slow / easy-to-hit targets using modern weaponry. Strking a single up-armored soldier using a guided weapon or fragmentation weapon that his armor could protect against is a much more difficult proposition, if still feasible as smart weapons like Pyros have proven. Guided weapons capable of targeting a single soldier, like the Pike 40mm missile launched from a grenade launcher or Pyros, which is dropped from aircraft, will become the norm.

If you can move at 5mph to 10mph while carrying an immediately usable 30mm cannon or pair of guided missiles, then you can engage and severely damage or destroy any vehicle less well-armored than a main battle tank. The heavy feed mechanism of the M230 could be removed and replaced with a small magazine. The M230 barrel weighs 16kg, whereas the receiver is a hefty 28.6kg. A short-recoil or manual straight-pull type bolt mechanism could reduce the receiver weight to something that would make the weapon only about the same weight as the 20mm South African Denel NTW-20 anti-materiel rifle, which comes in around 35kg and fires the same ammo as the M61 Vulcan cannons.

You have to give up some of the firepower of a fully-automatic M230 for the portability of the NTW-20. The end result is a practical weapon for engaging enemy vehicles or suppressing enemy infantry by firing at the ground near the infantry. A practical airburst HE shell would be a game changer. The comparatively light HE fragmentation shells (not the heavier HEDP dual-purpose anti-armor shells) have muzzle velocities approaching that of the 30mm GAU-8A Avenger gatling gun that our A-10s are mounted to, but worse ballistics so they will not perform as well as the more aerodynamic DU penetrator rounds fired by our A-10s.

As for the guided missile armaments, the Javelin missile carries a slightly larger warhead than the Hellfire missile, which is one of the largest and most powerful of the type. The NLAW is a smaller missile with less range, but it allows for point-blank engagement distances (20m) that the Javelin can't do (65m direct, 150m top-attack). Some might claim that you should never get that close, but urban areas or terrain obstructions dictate engagement distances, not beliefs about what combat should look like.

NLAW is clearly better suited to urban environments. I would assert that the 84mm Mk153 SMAW or 84mm AT4 or 84mm Carl Gustav are better weapons than NLAW for engaging nearly anything except main battle tanks at close ranges, being much cheaper and faster to use. NLAW has a much larger diameter and heavier HEAT warhead, so it will penetrate better than all lesser weapons, thus more useful against heavily armored vehicles like tanks. NLAW is overkill for APCs / IFVs / armored trucks, field fortifications like machine gun nests, etc. It still has its place in the arsenal, though.

To attack high value but lightly-armored moving targets such as self-propelled guns / howitzers or air defense systems, the high velocity laser-guided 70mm APKWS-II is a good option, at a cost of only $22K per weapon and a motor burnout velocity very near to that of Starstreak. At 74" in length, it would be unwieldy for an armor suited individual to port around, thus infrequently deployed. The unguided 70mm Hydra rockets are much shorter, around 48" or so from memory, and maybe a bit more than that, but only modestly lighter. The additional length of the APKWS-II is the guidance section, which adds all of the additional weight (25lbs to 27lbs or so for the unguided rockets vs 32lbs for the guided APKWS). The rocket motors and warheads are exactly the same as the Hydra-70 series. Relative to slower portable ATGMs, APKWS are pretty fast weapons, on par with a Stinger and about the same diameter and weight as a Stinger. All of us questioned the capability of Stinger against a jet, but I they seem to get the job done when the target is in range. Practical engagement envelopes against fast jets are quite abbreviated, meaning measured in seconds. Any fighter jet flying straight and level at high subsonic speed and around 20,000 feet is basically immune except for dumb luck.

For air defense, IR-guided weapons like Stinger or laser-guided weapons like Starstreak are highly effective against helicopters and smaller attack jets. The latest seeker software is largely immune to simplistic decoys like flares or electronic "dazzlers" that attempt to use lasers to confuse IR-guided weapons. That applies to pretty much every portable IR-guided weapon, not just ours. Guided variants of the rockets fired by traditional "dumb" rocket launchers such as the Mk153 are also being developed for low-cost air defense against small drones. The CLU from the Javelin has been successfully used to launch Stingers, so an upgraded version of the CLU with a laser target designator could be used to feed initial guidance information into all of these weapons, including NLAW.

For area defense / suppression of enemy infantry, it would become practical for a single soldier to carry the M224 mortar and a reasonably good supply of mortar shells, without resorting to distributing the mortar shells amongst all soldiers in the unit. A lightweight magazine-fed .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle such as the GM6 Lynx is another realistic armament option, along with enough ammo to make carrying it worth the extra weight.

The one thing that all these various armament options have in common is that they all weigh no more than 100 pounds. Even if the suit stops providing power-assist to the wearer, the user can still move around the battlefield without carrying more weight than a modern infantry soldier normally carries. The initial version of the suit will only provide power-assist for leg movements. The load carried by the soldier will be distributed through the hips and into the ground via the articulated leg chassis. Later versions will also provide arm and torso power-assist. There are already improvements to load carrying capability without using any power at all.

75 Years of Innovation: SRI SuperFlex Suit (DARPA Warrior Web Program)

Lightweight BNNT armor combined with suits such as the one DARPA has already developed should enable an individual to move about the battlefield as if they were far less encumbered by their 100 pound load. A rigid metal suit, of the type most people think about when they think of exoskeletons or "power armor", is counter-productive, as DARPA has already discovered. The key is precise and smooth support for the desired movement, at the exact moment that movement is executed. Basically, that practical load limit of around 100 pounds or so is still applicable. Rather than being a serious burden to the user through imbalance or lack of proper support, the 100 pounds can feel like an evenly distributed weight that does not create extreme pressure points that eventually lead to serious muscular and skeletal injuries.

With this kind of weaponry a modern infantry soldier can take on and defeat most military land or air vehicles. He or she may get some kind of ride from a traditional APC / IFV to somewhere near the battle, but the end goal should be the use of human operators to successfully repel combine arms mechanized attacks with coordinated close air support. Unobtrusive drones that transport food / water / medical supplies / ammo near but not into the actual combat zone will sustain troops in the field without the need for large / heavy / vulnerable vehicles that infantry can ambush at-will in many different types of terrain, to include the urban terrain of modern battlefields.

The drastic miniaturization of electro-optical sensors, imaging radars, and munitions electronics has created an array of weapons that are threatening the survival of combat vehicles and light attack aircraft. Guided munitions that were simply infeasible as little as ten years ago are now quite practical and easy to come by. The macro trends have been towards smaller weapons that are easier to transport, consume less material to create, cause less collateral damage, and require less operator training to use effectively. In general, they're also less costly to procure than prior generations of larger and more powerful weapons with similar capabilities. We went from the Bullpup (1,785lbs), to the Maverick (460-670lbs), to the Hellfire (100lbs), to the Griffin (45lbs) and the Javelin (35lbs). Each of these successive miniaturizations enabled the employment of an equally effective weapon at far lower weight, to the point that a single person can carry a weapon capable of destroying most moving vehicles. Static targets such as bunkers or airfields still require much larger and more powerful weapons to destroy, but if you can eliminate enemy soldiers and their vehicles without totally obliterating the infrastructure around them, then you get to make use of it after the battle.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-14 05:31:37

Reports of a Russian ship explosion

Global shipping 24 hr internet marinetraffic seem to show a lot of Big Tugboats in the Area

'Ammunition detonated': Crew evacuates damaged Russian flagship
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news … ile-attack

Massive Explosion Lights Up Nikolaev Night Sky
https://funker530.com/video/massive-exp … night-sky/

One Of Russia’s Biggest Cruisers Just Sank Near Ukraine.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2 … skeptical/

Germany seizes world’s largest superyacht from Russian billionaire
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia- … ize-worlds

Beyond any reasonable doubt that the 11,490 ton SLAVA Class cruiser Moskva has been hit off Ukraine
https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status … 8200146944
'Even Russian sources report it'

'Moskva aka Москва, lit. 'Moscow', formerly Slava 'Glory', is a guided missile cruiser of the Russian Navy. She was the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class and was named after the city of Moscow. It is the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet' https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ru … 022-04-13/

The blast is yet another military setback for Russia, which has suffered a series of blows since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what Moscow calls a "special military operation" to "denazify" the country.
Interfax said all the crew had been evacuated. It cited the ministry as blaming the blast on a fire and said the cause was being investigated.
A Ukrainian official earlier said the Moskva had been hit by two anti-ship missiles but did not give any evidence. The 12,500 tonne ship usually has a crew of around 500.
"As the result of a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser, ammunition detonated. The ship was seriously damaged," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. "The crew was completely evacuated."

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-04-14 05:41:23)

kbd512 · 2022-04-14 15:26:06

Russia now claims its guided missile cruise, Moskva, has sunk! Moskva was an 12,500t guided missile cruiser in Russia's Black Sea Fleet, serving as the flagship. Ukraine claims to have demilitarized the Russian naval vessel in accordance with its self-defense doctrine, in order to convert Moskva from its formerly belligerent role to its new peaceful role as an artificial reef supporting marine life within the Black Sea region. In accordance with its newly assigned role as an artificial reef, Moskva was moved into position by the Russian Navy as part of a cooperative effort between Ukraine and Russia to properly dispose of dangerous Russian weapons of war deemed unfit for purpose after falling into the hands of criminals masquerading as Russian naval service personnel.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-14 20:08:02

The reality is it was still on fire as it tried to move away from the fight....
Did I hear we gave new missile battery to have them give the old Russian stuff to the Ukraine's?

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-15 17:12:59

It is terrible to read reports of the civlian population suffer. Yet it seems Russians were not ready for this new type of War and Battle, although they had a far more powerful Navy and Airforce they were unprepared for Ukraine's resistance and Warfare has without doubt changed, use of drones, sometimes modified drones dropping home made munitions, possibly modified RPG warheads, tanks while important in the days of WW2 today they can suddenly becoming sitting ducks.

Russia’s Putin should face war crimes trial for Bucha killings, says Biden
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russ … says-biden

What to Make of Biden’s Handling of Russia vs. Ukraine
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-handli … 00773.html

Less commentary?
mostly an advert for their own tv episode or podcats?

'Massive Explosion Recorded in Kyiv'
https://funker530.com/video/massive-exp … v-tonight/

'To the sailors': Relatives of doomed Moskva crew defy Russian censors with unofficial memorial
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … orial.html

The battleship had a usual crew number of 510 sailors.
He claimed: 'The leadership of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation have deliberately hidden the truth from relatives and friends of the crew members.'
His account contradicts other earlier versions, including that a Turkish vessel rescued more than 50.
If Kyiv's claim is correct, then the deaths of the sailor would add to the already huge death toll suffered by Moscow's forces during Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It is believed over 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Meanwhile, Mykhailo Samus, director of a Lviv-based military think-tank; Andriy Klymenko, editor of Black Sea News; and Ukrainian newspaper Defence Express all warned that the Moskva could have been carrying two nuclear warheads designed to be fitted to its P-1000 'carrier killer' missiles.
If true, the loss of the warheads into the Black Sea could spark a 'Broken Arrow' incident - American military slang for potentially lethal accidents involving nuclear weapons.
'On board the Moskva could be nuclear warheads - two units,' Samus said, while Klymenko called on other Black Sea nations - Turkey, Romania, Georgia, and Bulgaria - to insist on an explanation. 'Where are these warheads? Where were they when the ammunition exploded,' he asked.
Meanwhile Ilya Ponomarev, a politician exiled from Russia for opposing Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea, said just 58 of the 510-strong crew have since been accounted for - raising the prospect that 452 men went down with the ship in what would be a bitter loss for Vladimir Putin's already beleaguered army.
The figure, while unconfirmed, is consistent with losses suffered on exploding warships. During the Russian Navy's infamous defeat at the Battle of Tsushima against Japan, an explosion on board the Borodino - slightly smaller than the Moskva - saw all-but one of her 855 crew killed.
Russia claims all the Moskva's sailors were 'successfully evacuated' but video taken in Sevastopol overnight shows dozens of cars purportedly belonging to the sailors still parked in the port - suggesting their owners had not returned to collect them.
Rumours have also began circulating in Ukrainian media that Admiral Igor Osipov - the commander of Russia's Black Sea fleet which the Moskva led - has been arrested in what would be the latest in a string of detentions linked to the bungled invasion.

' That's what they call a Kansas City Shuffle. When they look right, you go left. '
https://twitter.com/CanadianUkrain1/sta … 7930834947

'Neptune' was reported as the types of missile, it seems to deliver a smilar attack defense role as the Exocet missile (France) and Harpoon (US)

Neptune's design is based on the Soviet Kh-35 anti-ship missile, with substantially improved range and electronics. The system is designed to defeat surface warships and transport vessels with a displacement of up to 5,000 tons, either in convoys or moving individually.

Drones are reported to have been used to harass the vessel and keep its air defences distracted

The system entered service with the Ukrainian Navy in March 2021.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210315185 … siles.html

The system has a maximum range of about 300 kilometres (190 mi). A single missile weighs 870 kilograms (1,920 lb), of which 150 kilograms (330 lb) is the warhead

The Russian Navy attempted to tow the damaged ship toward Sevastopol but it sank before reaching port.
https://www.wsj.com/
Moskva is the largest warship to be sunk in combat since World War II
https://web.archive.org/web/20220415174 … kva-sinks/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-04-15 17:30:25)

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